


Tongues

by AsbestosMouth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety Attacks, Basil Rathbone Appreciation Society, Fluff and Smut, Frottage, Humor, I made myself sick writing this, M/M, Nauseatingly fluffy, Pilots, Professors, Romance, Slash, Voice Kink, oh my!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-05 08:08:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12186198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsbestosMouth/pseuds/AsbestosMouth
Summary: Being a frightfully important scientist - Tyrion Lannister keeps mentioning Nobel Prizes, which is not pressuring whatsoever - Professor Willas Tyrell has to spend two weeks in Dorne liaising with his scientific partner over Very Important DNA Breakthroughs. This does not go quite to plan when a) he overdoes it on the wine during the flight because b) the pilot has the sort of voice that encourages spontaneous orgasm and then c) Lannist-Air loses his luggage.Alternatively: the one where Oberyn's in a pilot's uniform, and Willas' voice kink is a bit of an issue.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What? Oberyn in a pilot's uniform is a perfectly acceptable reason for a fic.

* * *

 

 

Willas Tyrell is nervous of many things, ranging from moths (they flap and try and go in his ears) right through to his grandmother; Olenna’s approximately nineteen hundred times more terrifying than winged beasties, but a rather less common sight in King’s Landing. Thankfully she remains, mostly, at Highgarden where she terrorises Mace and where Mother serenely glides through life plotting many ways in which to kill the old woman.

She tells the children this at those times when Mace refuses to stand up for his wife over his mother, and therefore Mum needs someone to vent to. If it happens she has all four Tyrell siblings in a group named ‘ _What’s Olenna’s Done Now???!!!_ ’ on various social media programs, then that’s just one of those things.

Thankfully, because he classes himself as sane even if anxious and weird most of the time, Willas left home at eighteen, achieved a spectacular degree in Genetics and Diversity from King’s Landing University, ended up headhunted by Varys to take over the role of Professor of the subjects from Aemon Targaryen - Willas’ personal hero in all things bar none - and only has to go back to The Reach for the usual hatch, match and despatch events. Margie ended up marrying Robb Stark of all people, Garlan’s over in Qohor and blissfully happy with Leonette, Loras and Renly have been together since his little brother was fifteen and are still inseparable. They all, too, escaped the loving machinations of Olenna, albeit with her being thrilled that they are all attached to various high ranking Westerosi families and, in the case of two of the four, are furnishing her with grandchildren.

Willas has had boyfriends, thank you. Well. One proper one.

Beric and he got on incredibly well, and Willas almost thought he was the One, but apparently he turned out to be too sweet for Dondarrion: they broke up when they both realised that they were better being friends than lovers. They see each other weekly, and Willas tries to like the various strange partners his friend has, which considering what happened is truly noble of him, and wonders if him being so nice put Beric off, well. Decent people. Thoros is bad enough, but Ramsay Bolton? Really? Yes, very talented in forensic sciences and nervous systems, but he turned up to the pub with an actual dead hand once, and poked Jaime Lannister with it, suggesting he graft it onto the stump, an-

He wasn’t quite aware of how dangerous a quiet real ale pub usually full of professors could be until that moment. At least someone punched Professor Baelish in the face during the ensuing melee, though. Well done, that educator.

Considering Baelish glares daggers at Willas, and Professor Tyrell has a propensity and reputation for drinking too much red wine and soda and getting, well, flail-y, he could have accidentally broken Petyr’s nose himself. Maybe that explains the inexplicable bouquet of flowers he got from the female PhD students?

Since then Willas hasn’t really thought about a partner. He enjoys sex, though remains a little traumatised by many of Beric’s suggestions; he’s never been able to play table tennis since. He tried to do what his boyfriend asked, he really did, but inflicting pain on another person, even if they are begging for it? Doesn’t sit well in his head. Every time he brought the paddle down on Beric’s flushed and excited backside, he found himself apologising, asking if everything was fine, was he hitting too hard despite the man’s monstrously tumescent erection, until Beric finally gave up on the that idea as an interesting experiment in how to not dominate another man. This happened every. Single. Time.

Willas’ kinks involve being appreciated for himself, the structural analysis of equine DNA, fevered literature readings, and pirates in long boots and sporting the sort of roguish moustaches only found on early 20th century film villains. He has a confusing erotic desire for both Robin Hood and Guy of Gisbourne from the 1938 Errol Flynn version, but finds Basil Rathbone infinitely more exciting. Rhett Butler quite often, though Willas himself is more Melanie than Scarlett. The new-ish television version of Robin Hood, but only Guy of Gisborne in that.

Guy of Gisborne can be a kink, can’t he? Not that Willas wants an evil boyfriend, as if he did he’d probably join Beric at the Table Of The Fucked Up Boyfriend Choice and be going out with, oh, one of Ramsay’s little henchmen. Sometimes they eye him as one, and Beric, blissfully amused, says it’s like Kylo Ren’s knights sizing up something tasty and breakable.

Beric says that means Ramsay is Kylo Ren - explains the black leather and general miasma of evil, though his hair isn’t as fluffy - and he, himself, is a taller and more genial General Hux.

Willas, according to his ex’s placing of everyone into  _ Star Wars _ roles, because Beric’s a colossal geek too, is a cute Sith who rebelled against the Empress (Grandmother) and is trying to win the Rebellion the battle for the galaxy one scientific breakthrough at a time.

Beric is, well, odd. Really quite odd. It suits him, and Willas misses that. He misses the long Sundays in bed watching films and box sets, and the reassuring muscular arms around his torso, and how Beric could pick him up, politely push him against a wall, and pretty much bugger him senseless right there if he chose, though he did much prefer Willas to top. More than that, it’s the connexion with another human being; he misses the chatter, the laughter, the tiny in-jokes, the voice.

Beric Dondarrion has the sort of voice that makes his Willas’ stomach vibrate with intense pleasure. Not a bass, not a baritone, but somewhere in between, and possessing the rich vowels of a Southern Stormlands/Dornish borders accent - the timbre explodes along Willas’ body even now.

No. Willas may have several kinks, and most vanilla they are apart from sometimes he’d quite like to be the one tied down and lovingly ravished, but vocals are the number one, top thing, bar none. Not necessarily accents, though he does appreciate lovely ones, but certain vocals turn him to jelly. The way Jaime Lannister drawls the letter ‘e’ in that ridiculously mocking way. Northern inflection in consonants. The entirety of Sandor Clegane,  _ sans _ his actual body - he’s frighteningly masculine to the point of terrifying. Sam Tarly’s giggle. How Asha Greyjoy swears. He finds beauty in most voices, but some pluck him from mere appreciation into a desperation that only he, his left hand, and possibly the people living in the flat next to him - oh, nice Mr Seaworth’s warmth in every note - know.

And now? He’s off to Dorne. Dorne. Land of one of the most beautiful regional accents in the entirety of Westeros.

Willas Tyrell is anxious of many things. Moths, as has been discussed. Olenna, as is only proper. Death by Ramsay Bolton. Climate change. Having his internet search history discovered and mocked by Loras. Further operations on his knee.

He does, however, absolutely love accents and flying.

There’s something dreamy and wonderful about flight. He can tell you exactly why a plane can fly because Willas is gifted in all sciences apart from chemistry, and he’s merely excellent at that. The whole idea picks at his mind, makes him over-enthusiastic and possibly slightly boring. In another century he’d possibly have ended up as an engineer, creating structures from steel and iron, and tunnelling through rock like one of his childhood heroes Brunel. The possibility thrills him; what will come next? He awaits driverless cars with an exuberance, and has a deposit down for one of the first batch that are brought to Westeros. He also has a more sizeable chunk of cash carefully accruing interest for when space flight happens, because Willas wants to experience the giddiness of zero gravity, and craves for the day he can float about without his leg hurting without having to be in a swimming pool and exposing his scars.

For someone who screams and hides when a moth even looks in his direction, he’s actually rather adventurous. It’s a pity that his body doesn’t allow what his head desires, and so Willas remains closeted in his dusty old university, dreaming of pirates, and space flight, and being truly loved by someone with the sort of voice that encourages spontaneous orgasm.

 

* * *

 

Given the state of his leg, he always flies business class. First is a little over-the-top for someone on a professor’s wage, even if the ticket is paid for by KLU - this jaunt to Dorne is for research. Economy doesn’t allow Willas to spread himself out, never takes into account that he’s almost six foot tall and is mostly made of leg, and he does like having comfortable seats into which he sinks approximately three inches.

“Good morning, and allow me welcome you to this o-nine thirty two Lannist-Air Flight from King’s Landing City Airport to Sunspear International.”

A nice voice, and a female one at that. A rounded alto; the sort he expects on someone caring, and considerate, and decent.

“My name is First Officer Tarth, I am the second in command for today’s flight, and look forward to travelling with you. Weather conditions at our destination are warm, with a maximum temperature of twenty three degrees celsius, and mostly sunny. In a few moments the cabin crew will begin demonstrating the safety features of this Embraer RJ-145 jet. Please pay attention to this briefing, as features discussed may differ from other aircraft in which you may have previously travelled. Our cabin crew today are Jeyne and Ros, and our chief flight attendant is Theon. If you have any requests or queries, please direct these to our staff. Once we are in the air, the captain will address you further. Again, I would like to thank you all for flying with Lannist-Air, and hope you enjoy your flight.”

Willas puts his seatbelt on, adjusts it about his middle, and pays rapt attention to the young man at the front of the aircraft who suggestively blows into his whistle, winks at various men and women, and has the sort of attractive but odd features that should belong to a top model.

“Seat back up,” he tells the woman in front, before grinning at Willas. “Anything I can help you with, ser?”

Pyke, perhaps? A definite streak of the Iron Islands crossed with the North going on, which softens his consonants nicely. The vowels remain spiky and piratical, as is usual with Ironborn, invoking long boots and sea-spray and reaving.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Eyes trail down Willas’ body. “If there’s anything you need, just call.”

Reaving with intent. Salt wives.

Blushing furiously because really, that’s thoroughly overt, Willas, used to books and hopeful students rather than professional lechers, mumbles something about possibly a nice glass of wine if that’s alright, and thank you, and all that sort of crap he spouts when he’s thrown a little by a situation. Gods. People look at Loras and Margie like that, not him, and he wonders if wearing a slim-fit shirt and his nice, albeit Loras-bought and therefore really quite snug jeans, was a good idea.

“Anything you want,” Theon promises, before he insinuates off, flirting manically with the sweet-faced stewardess. He’s then heartily smacked across the back of the head by the more buxom redhaired attendant, upon whom the uniform looks quite obscenely attractive.

 

* * *

 

“Good morning. This is your captain speaking.”

Willas freezes, drops his book into his lap, and, thankfully, manages not to make any sort of embarrassing noise whatsoever.

“My name is Oberyn Martell, and I am, most fortuitously, your captain today.”

He’s not vibrating. You’re vibrating. Oh. My Gods.

“As my lovely colleague said, we welcome you heartily to my aeroplane and we hope you have a most enjoyable experience today with us.”

That voice. Caramel, and heady Dornish wine, and pure unadulterated sex. It drips, and poisons, to the point where he’s about to die with a beautiful smile upon his face, and Willas has never ever before fallen in love with a voice without seeing the face of who owns the purring - he’s purring, he’s like some enormous sexy pilot cat.

Pilot. Uniform.

He’s an enormous sexy panther Dornishman with a wet-leather and velvet voice and he’s wearing a bloody uniform. In his mind he flits from the usual navy and gold creation to something more akin to the gentlemen flyers of the First World War: leather bomber jackets and breeches complete with knee length boots and rakish good looks. The boots are a rich tan, as is the jacket, and goggles perch upon black hair in dashingly wonderful steampunk glory. There’s a moustache, a really magnificent one, involved. Brylcreem. A handsome carved pipe clamped between gleamingly white front teeth.

“Currently we fly south east. Those passengers who perhaps have a window view can admire the beauty of the Stormlands as we pass over, though. Ah, no. There is much cloud, as usual in the Stormlands. I know no other place where it rains so! Currently, we cruise,” and the way he says cruise makes Willas grip the armrests, knuckles white, “at twenty thousand feet above sea level. Once we have passed the mountains, we shall then turn south, then south west, toward Sunspear. The flight time shall be, hmm. Approximately two hours and fifty five minutes? A little drag upon the tail reduces our speed, but we shall not be overly late. And, anyway, what is a quarter of an hour between friends, yes?”

He’d be Captain Oberyn Martell’s friend anyday.

Bathing in a voice. Can that be done? The syllables coat and splash, and Willas, overwhelmed, squirms gently in his chair. Thankfully he’s not obviously aroused. Thankfully he’s not sprinting to the tiny bathroom to relieve the tension, so to speak. Thankfully. Awfully. He could just go to the loo and take matters into his own hands, replaying the beautiful voice over and over as he furiously wanks?

“Wine,” Theon states, then he grins, the Stranger glittering in his eyes. The glass is thankfully rather full; obviously the steward has a heavy hand.

“T-thank you.”

“You’re rather red, ser. Are you feeling alright? Can I...lend a hand?” More hands. All hands on deck. Pirates. Bugger. Not like that. Just. Argh!

“N-No, I’m okay. Fine! Just a little-”

“Weather conditions at Sunspear are warm, and dry, with a gently caressing southerly breeze-”

Willas inhales shakily, reaching for the glass. He wouldn’t mind caressing Captain Oberyn Martell’s southerly breeze.

“Oh.” Theon pouts though the sparkle doesn’t diminish. He has a nice mouth, if overtly sensual. “Oberyn gets all the pretty ones.”

“I’m not. Well. I mean. It’s just. Well.” Theon just called him pretty. Gods.

“You are pretty. I’d probably break you, to be honest, and how can my cute arse and sarcastic hotness compete with the voice and sluttiness of a Dornishman?” 

“You’re very handsome, but-”

“And here I was hoping to get in a quick blowjob before we have to put the seatbelt signs back on.” Willas blinks at the man, who gives another of those mercury devilish grins. “Want to see the cockpit?”

“Is that a euphemism?”

“Nope. Anyway, I might get more flight time abroad if Oberyn sees you. He’s really partial to the pretty ones. I want to go to Meereen. The club scene out there’s insane, and the flights full of drunk people wanting to get laid.”

 

* * *

 

Theon does what Willas can only decipher as a secret knock, and the flight deck hatch door hisses open.

“Brought you a present, Martell. Get me onto long-distance flights and I’ll bring you another.” A hand lingers upon the small of Willas’ back before the flight attendant leaves him to go and probably try and get sex out of another passenger. The cockpit is as deviously complicated as Willas has always dreamed of; altimeters, and speed dials, and lots of buttons that look pressable and dangerous. Things that go ping.

“Remind me to kill Theon when we land.” First Officer Tarth sighs, martyred. She’s very tall, and very striking, and could crush approximately eighty percent of Westeros’ population with a single hand. Many would call her ugly, but she radiates a goodness that draws Willas in like one of his hated moths to a candle flame. Dependable, and honest, and capable. She’s quite sexy, and he likes her voice; Willas likes his women quite masculine in certain respects. They intimidate him less.

“He grows worse,” the Captain agrees as he flips a switch and makes a tiny adjustment. “Many apologies for my chief steward. He thinks that he may bribe me to allow him upon my longer flights. He wishes to taste the liberties of Meereen and be paid for sweet perversion.”

Captain Martell turns his head to face Willas, and smiles.

Willas? Stares, huge-eyed, and has to clutch onto the back of the pilot’s chair. Not because of his leg, or because of turbulence, or anything like that, but because Captain Martell is the sexiest man he has ever seen, and that includes celebrities and porn. He’s swarthy, silvering at the temples, and has the sort of moustache that would tickle on all sorts of delightfully sensitive flesh. Dark eyes flecked with gold. Stubble. That voice. He’s Rhett Butler, and dashing pirate assassins, and Guy of Gisborne, and utterly, heartrendingly, devastating.

“Welcome to my cockpit,” Captain Martell murmurs, heated and tempting like chocolate fondue, lips curving far too attractively into a sexy smirky thing. “You are?”

“Oh. Sorry. Awfully rude. I’m never usually rude, I just. Well. Um. It’s just that it’s all very exciting, and I love ‘planes, and-” Willas babbles, waves his hands around, aware of the hectic blush invading his face and the physical need to crawl into the captain’s lap and see if his hair is as soft and lush as it seems. 

“Willas. Tyrell. Um. Willas Tyrell. Lovely to meet you.”

Silence falls. Willas goggles like a rabbit in headlights. Captain Martell doesn’t break eye contact. It’s all quite intense.

“Excuse me, ser?” The red haired cabin crew member with the incredible and unlikely chest taps Willas on the shoulder after what seems to be an infinite lifetime of fighting the urge to fling himself at Captain Martell and beg him to just. Keep. Talking. “We’ve about to fly through a cloud bank, and you might need to be strapped in in case of turbulence.”

Captain Martell frowns, goes to say something, but closes his mouth the moment he sees First Officer Tarth’s very lovely blue eyes narrow.

“Ah, yes. We cannot have that, can we, Willas Tyrell?”

As he’s gently but firmly propelled back to his seat by the small yet surprisingly strong Ros, he feels oddly bereft. Twenty feet away sits perfection, with a voice like nothing else upon this earth, and the sort of body that Willas wants to fervently worship, and he’s being tied down by a stewardess who beams breezily at him.

“Another wine, ser?”

He nods silently, ends up drinking half a bottle and being woken up by the very sweet Jeyne, who lends him a comb with which to tame his stupid hair, and directs him blearily towards the correct luggage carousel when they finally exit the aircraft.

 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

Of course his luggage doesn’t turn up.

Willas, leg aching, ends up sitting on the marble hall of the baggage retrieval hall, next to the conveyor belt, wondering what on earth he’s supposed to do now. Thankfully he’s travelled enough to keep the essentials in his hand luggage, and he’s cuddling what Margie refers to has his man bag while silently blessing every one of the Seven that he’s got access to his various medications, the laptop, a spare pair of fortuitous boxers and socks.

Of course the Lannist-Air desk lurks beyond the baggage hall, and he has to go through domestic customs to get to it.

“I hate everything,” he tells himself as the one piece of unclaimed luggage, a battered looking khaki hold-all wrapped in lengths of rainbow twine, goes round, and round, and round, and-

This impacts everything. Sorting out this colossal cock up takes time from a busy schedule that he’s planned to the millisecond, complete with Excel spreadsheets all colour coded, to basically run his life for the next two weeks. Willas did not enter ‘have luggage forcibly removed from self over the course of the flight and end up bereft of any sort of clothing: 2.5hrs’. No, according to his phone, by now he’d have cleared customs and theoretically should picking up a small and easily maneuverable car from the rental people he’s booked with (automatic - he’s got enough movement in his right leg to do braking and accelerating, but there’s less strain on him over all) to make his way to his hotel.

Sunspear International is quite quiet as airports go; they’re out of season, even if the weather is warm and balmy. The midsummer months usually sees the peninsular crawling with families, desperate for some sunshine at a cheaper rate than crossing the Narrow Sea to Essos. Dorne does try and market itself as something more exotic than the Costa Braavos, or the party isles of Myr, or Meereen’s debauchery. The culture shines, the people are proud of their heritage and don’t put up with drunken stag parties or people urinating over thousand year old architectural gems. Dorne is the sort of place where very middle-class people with pretensions take their interestingly named children for the sort of cultural holiday that Willas yearned for when he was about twelve.

Of course he was the sort of child that voluntarily did homework, read encyclopaedias, and seemed too old for his age. Olenna encouraged that.

The screen above the carousel proclaims the next flight to land is ETA in one hour and forty five minutes.

Right. They really have lost his case. Brilliant.

Luckily there isn’t anyone around to see the saga of Willas getting to his feet. It takes a bit of shifting about, trying to balance on his bad knee, clawing his way up the conveyor and abusing his cane, and he manages to get up, a little sweaty and red in the face with his shirt and jeans glued uncomfortably to various parts of his anatomy.  

Right. Lannist-Air desk, then pick up the car, then drive to the hotel. He’ll have to forgo the visit he planned this afternoon and try and get a nap in because the tension builds, horribly, in his shoulders, and he’s still feeling a little woozy from the wine and-.

Oh.

Willas looks up at the magnificently overblown Dornish ceiling and swears, very softly.

Lannist-Air desk, cancel the car, take a taxi to the hotel because he can’t drive in this condition. Nap. Tomorrow get a taxi back to the airport, rent a car, and-

Really, if he hadn’t drunk so much, everything would be far easier. But no. Nothing in this life is easy for Willas when it all conspires against him.

He’s trying to remember where the taxi rank is, as Sunspear International may be quiet but it’s a vast edifice of showy commercialism and slick glass, so doesn’t really register the person at his side until a hand finds his shoulder.

Willas, miles away, gives the sort of scream that could destroy ear drums from twenty paces.

“Screamer, eh?” Theon grins at him. “You lost?”

“They’ve mislaid my luggage.”

“That’s shit.” Off the aircraft, and therefore technically not part of any sort of flying experience, the flight attendant looks rather laid back and smells, suspiciously, of cannabis. Not that Willas indulges much; he did, a little bit, a while ago when medication wasn’t really helping his leg, and he prefered to eat the stuff rather than smoke it, but he did go to university and isn’t unaware of the sweet stink of the drug.

Of course it’s legal in Dorne. Many things are.

“I’d invite you back to mine,” Theon adds, “but I don’t live here so I’ve not got a mine, and I’m just in layover until tomorrow, and to be fucking honest I’d try and shag you, so probably not the best thing. Unless you want me to shag you?”

Theon is attractive - very much so. He’s all teeth and smirking and promise of a long lean body under his gold and red Lannist-Air polyester blend shirt. He’s young, though, and looks too much like a student. Having been the fixation of several of his pupils, that makes the thought rather crawl-y.

“I’d shag you really good,” he whispers into Willas’ ear.

“It’s very kind of you to offer,” Willas mumbles, aware of a hand once more resting lightly at the small of his back and lips - nice lips, they really are, but they’re not Captain Oberyn Martell’s lips speaking in that Dornish sex voice - hot against his skin. “But really, I’m fine. Thank you. But thank you for offering. Very kind.”

“Theon, are you bothering a passenger?” purrs that voice, that voice that qualifies as not just a Dornish sex voice but _ the _ Dornish sex voice and Willas, like some Pavlov dog, quivers as the cadence licks his throat, slides between his thighs, teases him to gooseflesh and wanton thoughts of riding the speaker in the cockpit. The whole new meaning for the word ‘cockpit’ insinuates itself into his brain with the sort of heady leer that could slay a man.

“We lost his luggage.”

“Are you offering to provide ‘compensation,’ hmm?”

“You always get the pretty ones!” He’s released, Theon rolling his eyes at the captain who merely raises a perfect dark eyebrow.

“Go away, Theon.”

The flight attendant stalks off, grumbling to himself, and Captain Martell turns and gives Willas the full force of the moustache/face/voice/expression combo that makes him want to fall to his knees, right here in the middle of a baggage retrieval hall, and do whatever the Seven intended with his own mouth and hands.

“My apologies, Willas Tyrell. Theon is…” He considers, lips moving and frowning gently, before deciding upon a word. “A slut, which I do not decry him for, but he can be very insistent sometimes. He does not like flying unless he makes love at the end of the journey, for he enjoys infinite variety and passion and one-night stands.”

“No. Perfectly fine. Understandable. I mean, obviously the reputation of flight attendants is wildly exaggerated, because I’m sure it is, isn’t it, and he is a very nice young man, but he’s very young and, well. He’s.” Not you, Willas thinks helplessly, lost in those dark eyes that sparkle amusedly. He’s not six foot of Dornish perfection, wrapped in a pilot’s uniform, with the sort of dark delicious voice that drives him to insanity and beyond. “N-not my sort?”

“In the case of Theon, flight attendant reputation is most under exaggerated. Come-”

Willas almost does, because the voice told him to.

“Allow me to escort you to the Lannist-Air desk, and we shall seek your luggage together.”

 

* * *

 

“Wench? You landed?”

“Yes, Jaime. I’ve landed. As you are perfectly aware, I can’t answer your call the moment I touch down, and only then when I’m well inside the terminal building. You have sent seven texts to ask if I’ve died, and no. I’ve not died.”

“Couldn’t Oberyn do the parking? I’m far more important than anyone else, after all.”

“And big-headed, and insufferable, and-”

“What’s happened, Bri?”

“Theon. It’s always Theon! Why can’t I captain my own plane? I’m trained on 747s, Jaime. 747s! I’m stuck on domestic routes because your bloody father doesn’t think a woman can pilot anything bigger than a forty eight seater, and even then I’m only First Officer.”

“Do you want me to get Tyrion to get Varys to kneecap him?”

“Your Dad? Definitely. Theon brought a passenger into the cockpit.”

“That’s quite normal though?”

“I’ve had Oberyn waxing lyrical about the passenger for the last hour, Jaime. Willas Tyrell this. Willas Tyrell that. The perfection of bloody Willas Tyrell-”

“Bri? Did you say Willas Tyrell?”

“Yes?”

“Scrawny, mad hair, cheekbones? Wears glasses?”

“He’s more handsome than that, but yes. You know him?”

“Faculty of Science. He’s Loras’ brother, remember? Tyrion’s pet DNA specialist? Apparently what Willas can’t tell you about semen isn’t worth the wank that produced it.”

Jaime’s laughter threatens to deafen her, so she hangs up on her husband in a fit of pique, grabs her luggage, and escapes the airport.

 

* * *

 

“Good morning, welcome to the Lannist-Air helpdesk. How may we help you today?” The man, round-faced and earnest, blinks confusedly at Oberyn before turning his full attention back to Willas. He has the most singular eyebrows.

“Podrick. We have lost this gentleman’s luggage.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that we have lost your luggage,” Podrick says, almost like an automaton. “We will endeavour to find your mislaid belongings as soon as possible. Please complete this questionnaire, and we shall be able to begin the process.”

“A sweet boy,” Captain Martell says as he leads Willas to a bank of seats to complete the paperwork, “but, I fear, he has been shouted at one too many times and therefore retreats into himself when faced with customers.”

“Poor Podrick. I’d do the same - I'm not very good at being yelled at. At least with my job I don't really have to talk to the public all that much.” They settle, Willas carefully hooking his cane around the arm of the chair, and their thighs just oh so casually brush together. Thankfully the clipboard is rather weighty and he can rest it over his crotch before anything obvious becomes visible to those gorgeous melty dark eyes that are framed by the longest eyelashes. 

“Thank you for helping me,” he manages in a strangled sort of sigh.

“Ah, it is nothing.”

“And rescuing me from Theon,” he admits. “I’m a little passive sometimes, when things throw me off, and, well, my ex used to help me out when I froze up as he was in the army for a few years, and he can order people about like anything else, really, when he wants - mostly he doesn’t want, he likes other people order him around, which is why he’s my ex - and I’m just a little thrown off schedule here, so I’m just talking at you like a complete idiot, aren’t I and Willas, it’s truly time to stop talking-”

He grips the pen in a vice-like grip, starts scribbling in the answers to the questions provided, aware of the back of his neck getting hotter, and damper, and a shower - a nice cold one - would be a fantastic idea, and a change of cloth-.

Oh.

Willas looks up, straight into the glorious gaze of Captain Martell who smiles almost wolfishly, even if he isn’t a Stark, and swallows.

“Where would be the best place to go and buy some things?” he asks as he finishes the form, laying the pen on the seat next to him and pressing his palms to his forehead. Despair beckons, heavy and glowering. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m still a little bit drunk, and I’m an absolute idiot for that, and now I have to get some clothes. I hate clothes shopping at the best of times, and my brother tends to do it for me because I’ve no idea what looks nice. I work in a university, I just put clothes on because I have to for work, and-”

Everything about the mere presence of the man makes him want to talk, and talk, about stupid tiny random things, because if he’s quiet Willas might fall a little more in want with Oberyn Martell who is. Well. Beautiful, really. He’s beautiful, and so far out of Willas’ league that it’s ridiculous. He’ll have stunning women dripping off him, he’s probably not at all gay, and if he is, then he’d attract men who are physically far superior to a man with a buggered up leg and the tendency to forget to eat because of his making of major scientific discoveries. If it wasn’t for Tyrion throwing a sandwich in his direction and telling him that future cash cow Nobel prizewinners will never die on his watch, he’d be starving to death and probably riddled with scurvy.

Captain Martell tilts that devastating head of his, making the silver at his temples shine.

“You must not undergo such expense when I am sure we shall find your luggage. I could lend you some clothing if you so wish? I am a little taller than you, and a little broader, but we might find something that may suit, yes, if you come to my home? Allow me to make this up to you, Willas Tyrell?”

“That’s awfully kind of you, but-”

Willas pauses, cutting off his usual apologies, and frantically sums up the situation.

 

  1. He has lost his luggage. This is frustrating.
  2. He has the essentials, which is excellent planning on his own behalf.
  3. He has been rescued by the most handsome man who has ever lived who;
  4. has invited him back to his own house to borrow some clothing that;
  5. might smell of that spicy cologne he’s wearing, and can’t a man have a little fun without over analysing things sometimes and;
  6. Willas is an idiot.



 

“Yes.” His voice croaks out, froggish. “Yes, that’s very kind. I would like that, if that’s okay? I’ll obviously give you my details so I don’t go running off with your things, and where I’m staying when I’m in Dorne, and I’ll have everything professionally laundered, I swear.”

Captain Martell stands, elegant and cat-like even in that small movement, and offers Willas a hand to help him up.

 

* * *

 

The thirty minute drive to Oberyn’s - “you must call me Oberyn, not Captain Martell. We are friends, are we not?” - meanders through high-end estates before they take the road away from Sunspear itself, heading into the dusty beauty of Dorne. Around them lay ancient olive groves, and vineyards, and browning grassed paddocks filled with the sort of horses that Willas knows intimately via molecular-level DNA. This is race horse country, and his dissertation, the third one, the one that was published to great acclaim, followed genetic patterning of the Dornish sand steed and concentrated upon a hitherto unknown mutation that allows them to thrive in dry arid conditions.

Everything about the man screams class, and money, and elegance. He drives a hard-top vintage Jaguar. His house is understated and creamy-painted, sheltered by cyprus trees, atop a hill from which the entire vista of Sunspear and the surrounding environs can be admired. No city apartment for someone who obviously loves space and beauty; the terracotta tiles and lush greenery indicates an adoration of Dorne that suits Oberyn very well indeed.

Willas has stayed in world-renowned hotels that are less well appointed. He’s installed upon a balcony, shady and pleasant after the warmth of the sun, and Oberyn goes to pour drinks.

“It’s beautiful,” he calls over his shoulder, unable to tear his eyes from the scenery. Hilltop villages dot the horizon, walled and ancient. Idylls are less lovely than this tiny patch of Dorne.

“Yes,” the captain says from behind him, warmth bronzing his glorious voice as he places a sweating glass of lemonade on the table for Willas, and a lager for himself. “It is most lovely.” He doesn’t seem to be looking at the view, but at Willas himself. Very odd. However, since Oberyn does live here, he’s seen the beauty a thousand times. It’s probably imprinted upon his no-doubt very clever mind.

“Thank you for being so nice. If I get off schedule I panic, and I’m rubbish then. I am, by nature, a bit of a panickerer.”

“Do you need to call anyone to say you are indisposed? Family?” A beat, then Oberyn glances at Willas’ ringless left hand. “Partner?”

“I best text Sarella and say I’ll be late.” He fumbles his phone from the unfamiliarly tight pockets of his jeans, takes it off aeroplane mode. “She’ll be waiting for me, probably, and I said I’d try and be over after I got to the hotel. I hope she won’t be awfully cross with me.”

“Sarella?” Oberyn removes his jacket and Willas almost drops his phone. Under the high-quality and unfairly crisp white cotton he looks lean but toned, and the olive of his flesh suggests through the fabric, and the urge to stagger over and unbutton everything and just lick him like an ice cream beckons evilly. No jacket means seeing the tightness and perfect cut of his trousers, and how they cling, and. Unfair. Not fair. None of this entire scenario is fair in the slightest.

“She’s been partnering with me on some papers that we’re writing for work.” He looks up, pushes a stray lock of hair off his forehead - definitely needing a haircut. “She’s another scientist. I’m one. A scientist, I mean. I work with DNA. She’s awfully decent, but quite strident. She bullies me a little, but I think it’s for my own good.”

“Sarella Sand?” Oberyn asks. He settles upon his own seat, knee against Willas’ own.

“Yes. Do you know her?” She is, after all, very attractive in a cool and androgynous way that makes everyone else seem pathetically warm blooded. Oberyn probably knows every beautiful woman in Dorne and beyond. Intimately. Everyone must desperately want to sleep with him because he is perfection personified in aquilinity and saturnine handsomeness.

The man brings out a wallet, and very expensive it is too, and shows Willas a photograph of himself with several striking women, one of whom is Sarella Sand.

“My daughters.”

“Oh my Gods, you are not old enough!” How can Oberyn have a daughter in her mid twenties?! How can Sarella have come from the loins of Captain Martell? And now he’s thinking, headily, about Oberyn’s snake-y hips and thrusting loins. Oh. Gods. Again.

“Sweet boy, you flatter me.” The little pet name sends Willas’ ears pink, and he takes a swig of the lemonade to hide his embarrassed pleasure. A juniper tang caresses his taste buds, ginny and clear sharp under the sweet fizz. “Now I must know how old you think I am?”

“There's gin in this?” Desperately he tries to avoid answering, because that means he’s been thinking about Oberyn rather too deeply on a less than casual level.

“Medicinal. You must relax for you are most tense,” Oberyn tells him reassuringly, a warm tanned hand rubbing lightly at his arm trailing electricity and want. “When you wish to go to your hotel, after I find you something to wear, I will drive you. I shall drink one lager, and no more, Willas Tyrell. If you wish for lemonade, I shall fetch you one?”

His voice makes love to every syllable of Willas’ name, making a rather mundane moniker into something sexy, and attractive, and altogether so unlike Willas' himself that he's not quite sure what to do with himself apart from down half of the gin and lemonade.

“I thought early forties,” he admits.

“Ah. You flatter me so greatly. I am forty seven. And you, lovely boy, are the same age or a little older than Sarella, yes? Twenty seven? Twenty eight?”

He's thrown by it, unsure if Oberyn attempts to be nice or that perhaps he does look younger than he actually is for once. The usual seriousness, exhaustion, and general air of organised panic tend to haunt Willas’ freckled face, along with the tired dark smudges under his hazel eyes.

“Thirty three,” he mumbles, looking at his hands. Definitely Oberyn trying to flatter him. He feels like he's been run over by a herd of wild Sand steeds, gritty and sticky and fretful.

“Not old enough to be your father,” Oberyn mentions quite casually. “Not even I was so bold. Come. Finish your drink and then I shall show you to the bathroom.”

 

* * *

 

Showers are divine things. Willas wallows in warm water and creamy spiced soap, scrubbing himself down with workmanlike discare before lingering under the jet and daydreaming gently. For a long moment in his mind Oberyn has just come home from being Captain Martell, Willas is his lover, and he's prepping himself for hours and hours of wonderful voice-filled sexual shenanigans. The splendid isolation of the villa allows them to never be disturbed, especially when Oberyn, in long dark riding boots, ties him lovingly to the bed and commits various nefarious sinful acts upon Willas’ willing body.

How tempting it is to just masturbate here, get it over with, be calmer and a little more self-aware? Hugely. Massively. And yet? Willas does not. He gets as far as taking himself in hand, drugged on remnants of wine and gin, fantasising about that rich voice and incredible face, before realising that he really shouldn't go about wanking in shower cubicles that aren't his for hygiene reasons.

Instead, after turning the shower to icy cold, he emerges dripping and shivering.

Best to store everything up until he gets to his hotel. Definitely.

Towel about his hips, he wanders into the guest room attached to the ensuite, glasses steamed up and utterly unprepared for Oberyn to be lounging upon the bed, legs crossed at the ankle and arms behind his head, and looking every bit the masturbation material he truly is.

Willas squeaks, ends up trying to camouflage his own body, wishes that there was a robe to hide in.

Oh Gods his leg. Oberyn can see his leg, with all the scars, and how hideous that is and how thin Willas is, and how everything is, and he's such an idiot - Willas that is - for not asking for some clothes to take into the bathroom, an absolute idiot who gets ridiculous crushes on men with how many daughters? who are obviously straight because of those daughters existing, and even if he did like men who would want someone with a leg like his apart from Beric who has dreadful taste in partners, and his own scars, and he doesn't know what to do with himself but stand there like a prize idiot while Oberyn watches him with those gorgeous eyes-

“Thank you. So kind. Really. Awfully lovely, actually. You are. I mean, um, with helping me out, a fellow man in a crisis, and being just. Lovely.” He sighs and tries not to sound wistful, wonders where his usually extensive vocab has fled to. Usually Willas can’t shut up. He’s a talker, and is mostly quite interesting to a certain point until he starts getting obsessive over subjects, and people usually like him. They actually do. He can be quite extroverted at times when not pressured, and amusing, and his friends say he’s ridiculously fair and decent. Excellent for pub quizzes. Dependable and diplomatic. He’ll help anyone in a crisis.

Put him before someone he finds attractive, and he usually muddles through without making too much of a tit of himself.

Put him before Oberyn Martell, and he’s lost in a labyrinth of lust, and a haze of want, and a miasma of general panic.

Instead he steps forward, perches himself onto the very edge of the bed, remembers not to flash the Most Beautiful Man In Dorne - it is known - and attempts to try and salvage some scraps of dignity.

“My clothes will be large upon you, for you are so slender, but we shall make do, shall we not?”

“Thank you.”

Oberyn shifts, the mattress dipping as he slithers near to Willas. He’s undone the top few buttons of that glowing white shirt. He’s got collar bones, and chest hair, and Willas wants to make a nest of cotton and the man’s arms and.

He’s rolled his sleeves up.

Tanned forearms, with that groove denoting a certain bodily fitness, and long strong fingers, and dark hairs over tawny flesh. Willas makes a tiny sound that clicks in his throat as he tries to swallow, tries to calm himself. Tries to fend off any possibility of a rampant erection obvious beneath the fine towel that’s thankfully not fallen off his hips by thinking of various family members naked. Which works, hurrah, but he’ll not be able to face Mace again for a few weeks.

“I have no underwear for you,” the Captain says, an odd little smile playing upon his lips, and for a moment Willas thinks that Oberyn doesn’t possess any whatsoever, and he’s commando in his uniform trousers, and he shivers helplessly, “that will fit correctly, so you will have to go without.”

Doesn’t he have a change of pants in his manbag? Where’s the man bag? Oh. Screw the man bag!

“I-I. Okay?”

His genitalia will be pressed upon fabric that has wrapped snugly about Oberyn’s mighty and tempting crotch.

“At least I'm clean,” is all he can come back with, and Oberyn smoulders.

“It would matter not if you were filthy.” Saying words as he does, with a relish and enjoyment born from excellent Dornish living and probably tonnes of sex, should not be allowed. The entirety of Oberyn should be so illegal that even possessing him should mean being locked up for several years in Harrenhal. An image of being handcuffed and strip searched for his pleasure flashes before his eyes, long fingers probing and caressing as he’s bent over the nearest desk and rogered senseless by Oberyn in a prison officer’s uniform.

That’s a new one. Willas stores it helplessly in his fantasy databanks.

“I shall leave you to dress.” Oberyn stands, arches his spine and stretches like some great carnivore in a patch of sunlight. “I await you upon the balcony.”

Silence reigns for a moment, a heartbeat, too long before Willas' manages to nod. The action dislodges his curls from their plastered back wetness and just as they threaten to fall across his forehead, Oberyn reaches out and tucks the rebellious strands back with commanding fingers.

 

* * *

 

Everything is too big, but so beautifully cut and made that the effect isn't too ridiculous. In fact the trousers are slightly short and flaunt his ankle bone; Oberyn is torso rather than Tyrell giraffe-style legs. He tucks the shirt, a deep claret red in a soft cotton that's been washed so many times it feels like flower petals, into the jeans, cinches his belt tight, desperately tries to ignore the feeling of his bare backside and other naked parts nestled in equally buttery soft denim.

He pads apologetically back to the balcony.

Oberyn watches him.

“You must keep the shirt,” he says.

“Oh, i couldn't possibi-”

“I insist. It suits you far better than I. So much better. I rarely wear it, and would not begrudge you. I also cannot allow you to leave for your hotel without eating, for I would be most angry at myself for being a poor host. Will you eat with me?”

Willas fiddles at the shirt cuff, gives in, rolls the sleeves up to his elbows.

“That would be nice. Eating you.” Horror dawns. “With you! Not you. Though I bet you do taste very good if i did “ The hole he digs widens ever more rapidly, Willas' spluttering and apologising and trying to explain that he meant like top quality steak with some Dornish spicing but seared to a perfect crust, and didn't everyone think about cannibalism sometimes when on a train or ‘plane in case of the Apocalypse? Other people taste like things, like Jaime Lannister for some reason is cornflakes, and Varys roe egg that he pretends is caviar, and-

“It's been a horribly long day,” he finishes, placing his spectacles upon the table to he can rub burning eyelids. “I’m so sorry. I’m usually a lot less pathetic than this, and quite interesting, and I can usually hold a conversation that isn’t absolutely crazy. I really am awfully sorry, you must think I’m an absolute lunatic.”

“You must rest.” Oberyn’s hand rubs lightly at his shoulder, thumb caressing. Willas leans into it, helplessly. ”Exhaustion can make someone feel peculiar, yes?”

“No. That’s me normally, I just.” Slowly Willas folds himself so his face finds the blessed coolness of the slatted wooden tabletop. “That’s just me.”

 

* * *

 

A shower and clean clothes, a little less tipsy, somewhat relaxed, and Willas manages to actually demonstrate that he isn’t an absolute weirdo. Oberyn’s knowledgeable, and quick-witted, and makes him laugh rather too hard sometimes. He makes Oberyn laugh in return, all flashy white teeth and that moustache framing his sensual mouth, and pride overtakes his self-doubt for most of the short drive into the city.

They’d eaten fresh goat’s cheese smeared upon crusty bread warmed in the oven, salty olives from Oberyn’s own trees, and every bite tasted of heaven.

Outside of the hotel, however, a vague-ish emptiness rather than the remnants of a tasty meal fills the pit of his stomach.

“I guess this is me, then.” He smiles, a flittering brittle moth-y thing, before the internal and thoroughly infernal self-berating starts up once more.

He won’t see Oberyn again due to his own sheer idiocy, even if he amuses the man. It’s all his fault. Why can’t be be anything approaching normal? Of course Captain Martell doesn’t want to shag him senseless. Willas is a complete and utter numpty for even entertaining such a suggestion. The man hasn’t even tried, anyway. Everything was perfectly pleasant, and now he’ll say his goodbyes, ask Sarella for her father’s address, post the clothing back the moment he can, and move on in the knowledge that even spending a moment or two of time with Oberyn is better than never having met him at all.

Willas hates lying to himself. Not meeting Oberyn and therefore not experiencing this wrenching feeling of hope torn asunder would be far better for his sanity. In his limited experience with crushes he’ll be dreaming about these few hours for months, wandering about miserably, and working even harder to try and combat a certain crushing loneliness only compounded by Beric enthusiastically going on about various bizarre people he’s having bizarre sex with.

Oberyn’s saying something, utterly patient, and Willas drags himself back from pathetic wallowing for a moment.

“Your phone, please?”

“Oh. Sure?” He does as he’s told because that voice insinuates and commands and he’d leap into headlong battle if Oberyn asks him. The man unlocks it, taps at the screen for a little while, then hands it back.

“My number,” he says, as if it is an inconsequential thing. “For I would like to have dinner with you tomorrow, if you so wish?”

“Really?” Willas boggles like a goldfish? “But I’m being weird at you. And being weird. In general. Oh Gods. I am an idiot.”

“It suits you. Normality is most over-rated. Text me, sweet boy.”

Oberyn leans over, all cologne musk and warm flesh, and kisses him on the cheek.

 

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

 

Sarella is being Alleras today.

Willas likes Sarella, but he gets on better with Alleras.

She - pronoun always she, even when she’s being male - dazzles wherever she goes, in either clothing style. There’s something utterly elegant about how Sarella moves, and he realises, with a jolt after his second Tom Collins, that Oberyn has the same liquidity to him. They look nothing alike, for Sarella takes after her mother with her dark skin and darker eyes, but their body language is so similar that it makes him swallow the wrong way. A passing waiter smacks him on the back, gets him breathing, and Sarella gives him one of the amused and withering looks that she keeps just for him.

“Idiot.”

“Completely.” 

“I still can’t believe my father rescued you.” She snorts at the resulting blush. “And you’re in his favourite shirt.”

“But he says he doesn’t wear it any more?” Willas says. The cotton lays heavier over his shoulders at the revelation, as if he’s being hugged by Oberyn in absentia.

“My father is a liar.” She grins, and again that is something that Sarella reserves only for him. With others she is the full on ice monarch. “Looks fine on you, but if you actually ate, Wil, it might fit. I’ve ordered you the full tapas experience. You’re going to eat every bite of it.”

Everyone bullies him about food. Tyrion and his sandwiches and promises of Nobel prizes. Sarella and the gorgeous Dornish cuisine. Garlan Skypes and demands to know if he’s eaten, and if he’s not, his loving brother phones the nearest pizza place, all the way from Qohor!, and gets something crisp and thin-crust and goat’s cheese-y sent. Mother understands more, because she’s the same and sometimes forgets to eat. Dad? Complete opposite. He’s a man who goes and raids the fridge at 3am for leftovers, and eats then with a serving spoon to get the most into his mouth at any one time.

Oberyn gave Willas his favourite shirt. His gut clenches, molten hot.

“How is everything?” Changing the subject. Very sneaky, but necessary.

Sarella wrinkles her nose, causing a woman across the room to turn very red; she combines mystery of the Summer Isles with the grace of Dorne, after all. “Quite well. I’m transferring to Oldtown though. They weren’t interested in Sarella, but the moment Alleras applied-” The gleam in her eye shows her displeasure. “At least it will be a step forward in my career, even if I have to go to the Citadel.”

“Never? Surely that’s gender discrimination?” The Citadel at Oldtown remains in the hands of very old, very clever, very sexist geriatrics, who loathe having to let women into their midsts. Everyone normal hates the place. Ugh.

“As my oldest sister says, I am going to fuck their shit up.” She grins gorgeously, arrogantly, takes a swig of her lager - the same Oberyn drinks - and settles back. She’s dressed more appropriately for the smart restaurant they’re in than Willas with her three piece suit, undercut gleaming, and looks for all the world like a beautiful young man. She attracts admiring stares wherever she goes, as Sarella or Alleras, and brushes every single person away. Devotion to academia often means no inclination toward relationships, and she’s never had a lover in all the time Willas has known her. He’s not even sure if she wants one, or what gender they would be, or if many know that the handsome dark-haired boy is really an equally handsome dark-haired girl. Sarella goes for months at a time as Alleras, and the vast majority of people have no idea they are one and the same person.

Willas admits he’s jealous of the sort of freedom, so very Dornish, that allows a person to be someone else when the need takes. Society constrains, and Olenna constrains even more when one is the eldest. Loras? Fine, he can go and be gay with Renly Baratheon because Baratheons are wealthy and influential. Garlan? Breeds great grandchildren, and is therefore almost as golden child as Willas. Margaery? Ensnared Robb Stark with her womanly charms. Nothing more to say there.

For someone who is the heir to Mace’s estate and title, Willas always feels as if he’s the one letting the side down. Olenna, who he loves so much even if she is terrifying, indulges him. She’s proud of his intelligence, of his career and the growing respect in circles that matter. Varys takes an interest because of what Tyrion passes on, and since the Prime Minister has the ear of everyone, that puts the Tyrells in a position of power. However, there is no politically useful marriage on the horizon, or children, or even a lover who can open doors.

Olenna used sex (ugh!) to get where she is today, and she totally expects her family to do the same.

“Did you sleep with him?” Direct eyes find his own, and Willas turns crimson for the umpteenth time that evening.

“No! He’s asked me to dinner though, which-”

“Oh.” She looks at him with renewed interest. “He did?”

“Is that wrong?”

“Interesting.” She merely grins once more, the expression breaking her usual calm perfection, and the wickedness suits her utterly.

 

* * *

 

**_< unknown><10:31>_ ** hi this is willas from yesterday

**_< unknown><10:34> _ ** are u still wanting 2 go for dinner its ok if u dont want 2 just wanted 2 check

**_< 10:47> _ ** I did not think you would be the sort of man to text speak, Willas Tyrell - there are obviously hidden depths that I have not yet examined. I am very much looking forward to having dinner with you. What time would suit you, and do you have a favoured cuisine?

**_< 10:51>_ ** Podrick also informs me that your luggage has arrived. I have asked him to forward your case to your hotel, for you did not provide that information upon the form you completed. It is most fortuitous I drove you to your accommodation, yes?

**_< 10:53>_ ** It has been placed in a taxi and is on the way.

**_< Willas><10:54>_ ** thank u for the luggage! im good w/anything really sorry about txt speak my brothers r bad influences :(

**_< 11:03> _ ** I am, myself, the bad influence within my own family. My brother despairs often, but I refuse to behave myself. I have a reputation that I must maintain, and maintain it I shall. I know a charming Dornish restaurant if you would like to experience the authentic flavours of my kingdom upon your tongue?

**_< Willas><11:08>_ ** i like dornish on my tongue :)

**_< Willas><11:08> _ ** THAT SOUNDS SO BAD OMG

**_< Willas><11:08>_ ** just really like dornish not omg hole digging willas is digging holes

**_< 11:09> _ ** You are delightful. I am unsure if you are aware of this.

**_< Willas><11:10> _ ** ←----IDIOT

**_< 11:12>_ ** Delightful.

**_< Willas><11:14>_ ** ←--- NUMPTY

_**< 11:17>**_ Delightful despite Northern slang.

**_< Willas><11:19>_ ** ←---Mittys.  Rōvēgrī qringōntan!!!

**_< 11:22> _ ** Even more delightful with  **Valyrian?**

**_< Willas>_ ** **_< 11:25> _ ** Sek, k'athjilari :D

**_< 11:28>_** Now a little intimidating with Dothraki, in a fascinating and delightful way. Do you speak both languages?

**_< Willas>_ ** **_< 11:30> _ ** good w/valyrian but dothraki not as well :) i like dothraki its a fun one but my accent is sooo bad

**_< 11:32> _ ** I knew, of course, that you were an intelligent man, but even more you impress me.

**_< Willas>_ ** **_< 11:38>_ ** im just good learning things people say ive got no life tho what r ur hidden talents :) ?

**_< 11:49>_ ** If I told you, sweet boy, they would not be hidden? How can I charm you if you know all of my secrets?

**_< Willas>_ ** **_< 11:51>_ ** u r charming already :D

**_< Willas>_ ** <11:54> u r!

**_< 11:58>_ ** I have booked a table for us at the restaurant at 7 this evening. For some reason, it does seem such a very long wait, does it not?

**_< Willas>_ ** **_< 12:01>_ ** im the same when im going out 2 a nice place got to stop thinking of food :D

**_< 12:03> _ ** Utterly delightful.

 

Oberyn shakes his head and wonders how a man as beautiful, and sweet-tempered, and entirely fuckable as Willas Tyrell has managed to make it throughout his thirty three long years upon Westeros without being utterly spoiled.

Delightful. He truly is.

Oberyn is a man who desires, and wants, and lusts, and is willing, when the prize is so great, to be patient. Many fling themselves at him, as heated and erotically-charged as himself, and they do enjoy themselves together, but he craves the chase and flirtation, the meeting of minds. Cleverness. Conversation. He has made love to many people, and there have been very few that create a frisson of excitement as Willas Tyrell does. The mothers of his children, obviously, but no lover has been neglected or left wanting - Oberyn is friends with many of those he has slept with as he is a magnanimous and warm-hearted man who enjoys company. There is no reason to alienate those he has bedded, after all.

Idly, nosily, he Googles Willas. His personal information page upon the King’s Landing University website has a ravishing photograph of him with his hair falling across his forehead, sleeves rolled up lean freckled forearms, wielding the instruments of his trade. He appears as one of the bright young things of the 1950s DNA movement, in black and white, and he smiles to a person off camera. Rutherford and Franklin would welcome him with open arms. Another has him with Alleras, as sharp-cheekboned and slender as each other, pouring over papers.

Of course there are many matches for his name in Google. Oberyn learns of his august heritage, and how one day he shall be given the title of Lord Tyrell, and of spectacular attainments in his scientific field. Several fan pages have other photographs, obviously sneakily snapped in lecture halls, and he is nicknamed by appreciative students as Professor McDreamy.

Others are cruder. Will-do-him-in-the-arse Tyrell, for example. Someone has written appalling self-insert fanfiction. Obviously he does not read what is said about his daughter, for Oberyn cultivates a knowledge of poison and a love for his children that is all-encompassing. He would not wish to be arrested for the murder of foolish undergraduates.

It is understandable when faced with someone as lovely as Willas Tyrell that many may desire him.

He deserves someone, Oberyn posits, who understands that he is not just a beautiful exterior. Willas is cleverness, and a certain lubrigosity that tends towards absurdist, and a fey sense of humour. When he drinks his filters crumble, and his eyes alight with warmth and sparkle. And lust.

Such lust in those pretty hazel eyes, and questioning, and shyness, and a pure dreaming quality that moves him from merely human into something that more than that.

It is most flattering to be looked upon with such passion by someone so attractive.

Of course he searches for any articles concerning the scarring across the man’s knee and thigh that he glimpsed momentarily. The tightness of gait, the use of a cane, and the damage to acres of creamy pale flesh indicates something hugely traumatic, and Oberyn finds something in the very bowels of the internet that mentions a car accident aged twelve. A few of the higher brow gossip magazines relate back to that fact constantly, attempt to show Willas as a damaged and fragile creature who must be in want of a caring and understanding wife. They pity. Others show him with a thoroughly beautiful family who, it must be said, are rather more showy than the man he decides to pursue. Even the soldier appears shining and handsome in dress uniform upon his wedding day to a small and intensely smiling brunette woman with curling hair. Willas stands at his side in full morning dress, beaming so wide that he seems half-unreal, half-Child of the Forest.

As lovely as he is, the attraction is not entirely because of Willas Tyrell’s face, or body, though both are sublime.

The way he laughs. The babble of excitement upon his lips. How he apologises, and frets, and cannot stop himself speaking in the most wonderful surrealisms. Willas latches upon a subject and runs, displaying that hypnagogic and self-depreciating humour wrapped snugly about the voice of a diplomat, a scientist, a philosopher - a renaissance man in intellect if not in physical deed. He talks easily about many things, listens admirably, enjoys conversing when that initial phase of nervousness is gently chipped away by careful application of flattery, flirtation, and friendliness.

Willas Tyrell, above all? Is a most interesting man.

That he is also a very beautiful man is merely a delicious bonus.

 

* * *

 

“It’s quite understandable that they’d want Alleras.” Willas sips at a large glass of truly scrummy wine, alternating between that and equally gorgeous coffee. The Dornish do know how to dine; they’re taking after dinner drinks on a terrace lightly scented with honeysuckle, crickets cheerfully chirping about them. If it wasn’t for the faint hum of Sunspear traffic they could be in Oberyn’s beautiful villa and enjoying the delights of excellent food and even better drink.

This is their third dinner date in, what? Three days? Three whole days of trying to get some semblance of work done, and being utterly, irretrievably, distracted by texts, the occasional phone call, and some seriously frantic masturbation. Not that these are dates, of course, but what else does he call having dinner upon a certain date with someone? The words place a heavier meaning upon something that Oberyn must see as less than that. He is straight, after all. Straight, handsome, achingly attractive.

Oh Gods. Doomed. He’s doomed.

“She is brilliant.” Oberyn dips his sleek otter-y head. “The cleverest of all my daughters, and I am most proud.”

“She’s still scary.”

“It suits her. A strong woman, for what she desires needs such strength - my daughters have always been brought up to know they are as equals in this world, even if some would work against them. Perhaps that is why they pursue ‘masculine’ careers? Obara is also a pilot, though she prefers cargo routes and my flirtatious steward’s sister to the glamour,” and here the man snorts gently through his magnificent nose, “of passenger movement. Nymeria teaches close quarter knife skills to soldiers. Tyene? Ah, if it were another age, she would be quite a poisoner such is her knowledge - it rivals my fascination with the art - but no, she is a most successful pharmacist. Sarella you know. Academia threatens.”

Willas blinks and wonders how one man, albeit a brilliant and charming and intelligent one at that, can produce four obviously talented daughters.

“The others-”

“There are more?!” 

Oberyn’s laugh is fruit-rich and low, making his eyes sparkle with utterly unrepressed amusement. “There are eight.”

“Eight?!” Aware his voice strives towards the sort of sonic levels that only passing bats may hear, Willas clears his throat and croaks the word out once more. 

Eight daughters.

Doubt once more plagues. Again. As usual.

What is a man, who obviously enjoys the company of women enough to produce eight daughters, of whom he is fiercely proud, doing in the company a person like Willas Tyrell?

“Your wife must-” he begins, the creeping cold lacing his gut, but he’s stopped dead as Oberyn’s fingertips brush the back of his hand.

“I have no wife, sweet one.”

“Oh. I thought-?”

“Some call me a whore,” Oberyn murmurs, all glossy voiced and half-amused. “I merely think I appreciate others bodily.”

Willas downs his coffee, wishes he had more wine, wonders what to say to that. Obviously he knows about people who sleep with lots of other people - he isn’t that isolated or naive. He’s Loras’ brother, after all, and that should come with some sort of health warning considering. Margaery enjoyed many romances before settling with Robb. Garlan, like Willas, ended up too wrapped up in his career before being smitten with Lyonette the first time he saw her, at a charity ball Olenna threw. They married two weeks later, after a whirlwind romance, are sickeningly, blissfully happy, and are pregnant with their fourth in five years. How Garlan manages to do that with deployment taking him across Westeros and Essos no one quite knows. Super athletic sperm, probably.

“I have shocked you.” That delicate touch traces the back of his hand, across tendons and veins.

“Oh. No. Um. It’s just. I’m just.” He pauses, takes a breath and then another, tries to think. “I’m an idiot.”

There. It is said. Admitted.

Oberyn merely watches him, saying nothing.

Willas breaks.

“I’m not really experienced in things. Give me DNA, and science, and books, and I’m perfectly happy, you see? I know where I am, because these things have order. Or other people's’ troubles, I’m fine with them. I sit and listen, and I’m quite good with advice - Margie calls me the best big brother, gets all her girl friends to talk to me when they’re having problems, and then her male friends, so then I sort of turn into an agony uncle for half of the twenty-somethings of Westeros, which is quite weird really, because mostly I tell them to just try and be nice to each other, but don’t compromise what makes them them. Or gin. I’m excellent at that, and wine, too. Seventeenth century playwrights, and eighteenth century poetry. The Golden Age of cinema, especially Basil Rathbone. But me? I’m not really very good at me. Really idiotic at it, in fact.”

He smiles faintly, the corner of his mouth quirking.

“A chronic lack of confidence, they say. I take things wrong, I suppose. Like this. I, every so often, have the stupid notion that perhaps you’d like to sleep with me, but you’re straight. You have eight daughters, you can’t have eight daughters without being straight, can you?” The babbling intensifies, Willas’ nails scratching lightly at the beautifully lacquered chair arms and he can’t quite look Oberyn in the face; much easier staring at the honeysuckle blossom over his shoulder, near his left ear, because that’s far less agonising.

“My last boyfriend left me because I’m too nice, which I think is shorthand for horribly boring, and he’s having tonnes of kinky perverted sex with a mortician which is lovely for him but not so lovely for me. And perhaps with a pyromaniac. And possibly with a very large ginger hipster with a massive beard,” and then he’s counting on his fingers, thinking about Beric’s group of drinking buddies because Gendry is gorgeous and bull-like, Drogo dangerously fascinating and twice as built, Sandor Clegane - no, no, not going there, wrong, terrifying, almost as frightening as Ramsay Bolton - and everyone in the world wants to just touch Jon Snow’s abs and fluff his amazing hair. They might not all be having incredible filthy sex with Beric, but Willas, artistic enough to conjure incredibly detailed imagery, can see it happening perfectly well in his mind’s eye. “I’m not very good at kinky sex. I apologised every time I tried to spank him with the table tennis bat...racquet. Thing. What are they called?”

“Willas?” His monologue shatters as Oberyn calls him back from this confessional, upon a Dornish terrace, sweetly-scented with blossoms and the man’s musky cologne.

“Sorry. Gods. I’m absolutely-”

A hand wraps about his wrist, long-fingered and strong.

“Never change, sweet one. Never ever change.”

“I’m an idiot. I’m skinny and boring and awful at being me and I’m bad at sex,” he finds himself adding, before Oberyn?

Oberyn growls, gold-flecked eyes fathomless in the candlelight. If Willas weren’t feeling so pathetic he’d be half-hard and panting with that.

“No. You are incorrect. Slender and willowy. Fascinating. A juxtaposition of cleverness and naivete, of charm and wit and more besides. Flaws that I wish to explore, for they fascinate me. I cannot tell you if you are bad at sex, for I have not made love to you yet,” and the yet lingers between them, “but I know there are very few who are appalling at the act. No, some need the correct teacher. They need to be coaxed, and caressed, and educated. One such as you, so fiercely intelligent, so able to soak knowledge - imagine what I could teach you, Willas Tyrell?”

“You have eight daughters. You’re straight.” 

“I am as far from straight as you are, lovely boy. I just happen to take pleasure in infinite variety.”

Oberyn has very well manicured nails. Willas admires them, almost out-of-bodily, as they caress tiny circles upon his own pallid flesh.

Margaery has always ordered him to be more selfish, to live a little. All his life Willas has done what everyone else has expected; an excellent degree, for example, followed by the sort of career that will have him world famous by the time he’s thirty five. Through Tyrion Lannister he knows the Prime Minister, and through Varys he knows the Targaryens. He’s related, through marriage, to the Starks and Baratheons. That network of the famous, the aristocratic, the intelligentsia - they all meet centrally at Willas. He bridges, and smooths, and smiles, all in his quiet diplomatic way where he listens, and talks, and helps other people. His life, even his work, depends upon aiding others achieve what they want. Even his sex life, he supposes. Orgasms, good ones, are for other people.

No one has really ever paid attention to what he’s wanted before. Oberyn seems to be offering him pleasure, and Willas likes the thought that. He wants to be like Guy of Gisborne rather than sitting on the sidelines and dreaming of the smoldering villain in all his cinematic guises. He wants to taste what it’s like to not be sensible old Willas Tyrell, who is a Good Person, and do something heady and crazy and dizzying such as have sex with the most beautiful man with the most beautiful voice. More handsome the Errol Flynn. More sexually alluring than Richard Armitage. Even more magnetic than the one and only Basil Rathbone.

Even if he never sees Oberyn Martell after this. Even if it’s just one night of magnificent sex. Even if Willas, soppy and romantic, falls in love with the man in the post-coital glow and he takes months to recover. Surely that’s worth taking something that’s both offered and wanted in both hands? Surely?

Just once in his life, his quiet academic selfless life, he can take a risk?

“Oberyn?”

“Willas?”

He breathes once more, leans forward, kisses Oberyn at the hollow between cheekbone and jaw. Clumsy, yes, and nervish, and the warmth of flesh urges him to curl into Oberyn and use him as a particularly sexy teddy bear, and Willas’ voice isn’t particularly even when he manages to finally speak, lips moving against tanned skin and stubble.

“Will you take me back to yours and fuck me senseless, please?”

 

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *bumps the rating to explicit. Brofists self*

* * *

 

They take the time, on the short journey back to the villa, to sensibly discuss logistics. Willas is that sort of person, and it keeps him from chickening out. They’re not teenagers, for Gods’ sakes - it's perfectly adult to discuss urino-genital testing and preferred contraceptive use. They’re both up to date, Oberyn has a signed and dated photograph of his clinical physician's note on his phone, it's all very easily dealt with. He himself hasn't had sex since walking in on Beric tied to their bed - their bed! Yes in Beric’s flat, but Willas had a key and he always stopped after work on that particular day - with Ramsay Bolton prowling around him thankfully still fully clothed but looking far too at home dual wielding a tawse and a mini taser. This had been during the death throes of the relationship, so Willas merely apologised, closed the door behind him, and went and did something time consuming with some horse sperm and a centrifuge in his laboratory. 

Beric formally apologised. Willas forgave him because that's what he did. Making everything awkward with his friends and the group would turn everything a thousand times more awkward, so he smiled and felt irrationally guilty in a pleased smug sort of way when Beric told him that Willas deserved far better than a battered old masochist with a fire fetish. Then, quietly, without fuss, that was that. Apart from the battery of tests, obviously. Despite Beric’s assurance that he'd not shagged Ramsay and this was the first time they were doing a scene, it was best not to tempt fate and catch whatever rabies Bolton possesses.

To be perfectly honest, thinking back, Beric was quite an awful boyfriend. Lovely man, but…

He comes back to himself as he’s gently caressed.

Oberyn didn’t drink at dinner and manages to pilot the Jag perfectly capably with one hand on the wheel or the gear knob and the other remaining, at all times, on Willas’ thigh. Of course it’s Willas’ right one, the one with the scars, and he manages not to flinch every time that wicked hand slithers an inch higher and makes thinking really bloody difficult.

Yes, Oberyn can steer a car with his knees. No, it’s not legal. Yes, it’s quite scary, but Willas, tipsy on wine and the sheer magnificence of his own bravery at kissing this gorgeous Dornishman on the cheek, and also hoping the divots in his leg muscles aren’t too obvious, is a little oblivious to the possible peril that this might embody.

“Are there acts that you dislike?”  They've moved on to what’s permissible or not. Oberyn merely states that he will try anything twice, within reason, a small smile playing about the passionate sweep of his mouth as Willas lets out an involuntary giggle.

“I’m not great with pain,” he admits, shivering as fingers creep toward his groin, and he catches Oberyn’s sympathetic look before he pays attention to the road once more.

“Your leg, yes?”

“Beric says pain is salvation, and reminds us we’re alive, so we should learn to enjoy it and embrace it. I suppose if you’ve died like he has, then it’s to be expected you want to remember you’re still up and around, but I just think it’s miserable and reminds me of being cooped up in bed after operations, off my head on morphine, wanting to cry all the time, and feeling like my head isn’t attached to my shoulders.”

Those fingers trickle teasing waterfalls.

“A little pain can be most pleasing, but I presume you mean the more vicious sadomasochistic acts?”

“There are implements involved,” Willas confirms. “With spikes. That wrap around places that spikes have no business being, and I really shouldn’t be talking about my ex, but I’m just...you make me talk rubbish, constantly. You really do. It’s because you’re so stupidly attractive, and get me all flustered I think.”

Oberyn grins at that, perfect white teeth and that glossy moustache curling magnificently upon his upper lip. He’d look sinful as a swashbuckling sort, all rapiers and tights and long long shining leather boots that Willas can half-imagine brushing against his naked flank as he kneels as best he can and worships without question. After all, how can one not give thanks for such a paragon of perfection?

Cock sucking is an act that he has quite a taste for, heh, but Beric, being Beric, prefered having his own mouth viciously pounded. Well, as vicious as Willas could attempt to be when also being very aware of gag reflexes, combined with the urge to apologise constantly, frantically holding back trying to be nice, scrabbling to keep whatever mood Beric wanted, while squashing the urge to pet, praise, and say sweet words. If his boyfriend had wanted a cuddly and appreciative partner who could Dom him albeit in a very polite, is that was okay with you, thank you, I love you sort of way, then Beric would have been in luck. But no, Beric is more beating and fewer pleasantries, and, as Ramsay makes perfectly clear - ugh - Beric wouldn't know what a gag reflex was even if it put him in stocks and had at him with a cat o’nine tails. Thanks so much for that visual, Ramsay bloody Bolton, and now he can’t get that horrid little Hobbit’s murderleer out of his head. The one when Ramsay laid his leather clad hand proprietorially on Beric’s spectacular naked backside and staked his claim in a metaphorical pissing competition that Willas had no idea he was even part of.

“You think I am stupidly attractive, yes?”

Oberyn thankfully disturbs that line of thought once more.

“Hmm? Oh, you know you’re stupidly attractive. Ridiculously gorgeous, and your voice-” Willas sighs, shoves away all invasive thoughts of exes and Boltons from his mind, and looks out of the window because he can’t keep gazing at the little smirk that quirks Oberyn’s lips into smug kissability. Crashing a classic car because of kissing wouldn’t look great on the insurance claim.

“My voice.” Not a question, but more an interested statement as Oberyn changes gear with his driving hand once more. 

“You could talk people to orgasm, you know? It’s this combination of sin and lust, and amusement, and sex, all wrapped into dark chocolate, and rich red wine, and desert heat. It’s, oh. Cinnamon, and ginger, and spicing. Souks. Rudolph Valentino in  _ The Sheik _ .”

“Interesting indeed, my sweet boy.”

 

* * *

 

“Wine?” 

“I’d rather kiss you.” Willas replies with the sort of lightly tipsy panache that far more eloquent and sexually alluring men than himself possess, and he feels quite self-congratulatory before the object of his affections laughs softly and kisses his forehead.

“We have all night, lovely one. So eager.”

“Sorry, I don’t really know what happens next. I’ve not really slept with someone so quickly,” he admits as Oberyn takes his cane and gently places it near enough that Willas can grab if needed but far away enough as not to be an overbearing reminder of his physical difference or get in the way or somesuch. From what has been said between them, explicitly or not, his leg doesn’t seem an issue. Obviously Oberyn only caught a glance at the scars, and he’s probably never really been with anyone who sometimes has to be confined to a wheelchair. He’s mentioned a brother with paralysis though, so perhaps he understands? Thankfully Willas, in the warmth of Dorne, finds the arthritic remnant of the joint and the scar tissue eased by the climate but part of him - and he’s vaguely appalled by his vanity - thanks whatever Gods lurking that Oberyn got the mostly working and therefore useful more attractive version of him rather than the broken one.

“Or really slept with anyone without being in a relationship with them at all,” he adds. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Returning with wine anyway because, well, why not? When in Dorne etc.etc., and it truly is beautiful wine, dark and red and brooding in expensive crystal goblets, Oberyn settles on the settee next to him. “There is nothing to be sorry about.”

“For making this more complicated than it probably should be.” The wine calls his name, a siren-song. Willas gives in. Takes a gulp. It’s lovely, but not as lovely as Oberyn Martell.

“It can be as complex or easy as we wish. It can be me fucking you here, on the couch. You making love to me with your mouth in my bed. Us kissing, stroking each other to climax upon the furred rug before the fire. Talking. Knowing each other. It can be filthy, or gentle, or sweet, or perverse, or a thousand different things besides. It can be sex.” He touches Willas’ cheek lightly, cupping his jaw. “It can be companionship. It can be nothing but two people who wish to know more about one another  and not involving carnality whatsoever. Two people who feel a spark that may grow from an ember to a blaze that could burn continents, or, conversely, could flicker and die. Such possibilities, sweet Willas. But they are just that - possibilities.”

A gleam turns his eyes molten bronze.

“I could tell you, perhaps, how when you came into my cockpit I wanted you? How you smiled, wide-eyed and like a fae creature of legend, of Tolkien perhaps, or a Child of the Forest? Some shining creature lit by starlight, clad in trousers that should not be allowed because, Willas, they are most flattering. All I wanted was to drag you to my lap and make love to you then and there and frighten my First Officer.”

“If you keep talking-” Willas says, before Oberyn silences him with a finger to his lips.

“Then I learn you are not only attractive, but amusing. Intelligent. Strange in a most fascinating manner. Witty. Charming. Thoroughly unaware of how delightful you are.” He punctuates each fragment of speech with a suggestion of teeth against the rim of Willas’ scarlet-flushed ear.

That organ? Not the only place that’s currently engorged with blood.

Willas is, despite rumours spread by Loras and Garlan to the contrary, merely human.

“Fuckable.”

“Please. Yes. Please. Now.” That begging whine destroys any semblance of cool Willas might have built up in his head, but he's too far gone to particularly give a toss right about now.

“Ah, not yet.”

“You are a sadist!” 

“Not of the level that Beric Dondarrion desires, but one who would have you fall apart before I piece you back together with my touch. Silk scarves to hold your wrists, more than metal biting at your cock. Feather kisses at your thighs. Licking and sucking, and teeth caressing every tense muscle in your body as you beg me to let you climax, and me telling you not yet, lovely one. Not quite yet. Not until I allow you, but you are being so very very good-”

Willas, twitching violently and half-mad with the teasing sultry tone urging him toward breaking and embarrassing himself without removing his - Oberyn’s - jeans twists, ignores the jolt in his leg, and plants himself in Oberyn’s lap. Because he wants to, really. Because he can. Because, even though Willas was the dominant one in the bedroom in his and Beric’s relationship, he never felt like he was the one leading the proceedings or had the autonomy to really do what he wished. Spontaneity always proved difficult when all that equipment was deemed necessary to have sex, what with the various outfits, whips, chains, toys, and other things that had to be on hand. Sex sessions needed to be rigorously planned, often weeks ahead of schedule. That suited Willas quite well, since it fitted around work nicely, and he could set it up in Microsoft Outlook calendars and have everything prettily laid out in a spreadsheet he put on his fridge door, but sometimes he wanted. Oh. Passion. Love making. Pirates. Kissing and softness and being romanced by someone who didn’t have a fascination with very short angry psychopathic knife-wielding flaying enthusiasts.

Someone who wouldn't make him love and then break his heart the moment a more suitable partner came along. Not that it truly broke, but it didn’t half sting for quite a while afterwards.

Really. Ramsay and Beric getting together was something he should have seen a mile away.

It hurt. It still does, in the manner of a paper cut or a blister on his toe; Willas doesn’t think of it much, unless forced to, and then it really bloody pains him. It's a sharp and nasty little thing that prickles the corner of his eyes, but he can't complain, he feels, because they were limping those few feet toward the end of their nine month relationship that, in reflection, was doomed the moment that it started. A jigsaw can’t be made with one piece, and it takes many parts to create a successful relationship, not just friendship.

“What are you doing up there?” Oberyn, laughing, falls back to lay along the length of the leather settee.

Even this, with a man who is almost a complete stranger, seems easier.

“I wanted to. It seemed a very good idea, you see?”

“You may do as you wish. Anything you so desire, Willas Tyrell, for tonight it is I that wishes to give you pleasure.”

Such possibilities.

Obviously, decisions are really difficult when you’re both indecisive and always used to pleasing other people.

He starts by unbuttoning Oberyn’s silk shirt, all smooth-sticky against his fingertips as he fumbles at buttons, as it seems the best place the begin. Each popping of bone from buttonhole exposes a little more honed skin, gorgeously toned and even more gloriously olive-tanned and wonderfully furred across his pectoral muscles. He’s lean but defined, nipples darkly crowning his chest, and someone whimpers. Someone, and Willas suspects that the unidentifiable whimperer might be himself, has excellent taste in manflesh.

Manflesh. Orcs. Hobbits. No. Stop that!

Oberyn’s impressive Isengard presses insistently against the Orthanc in his own trousers, and Willas wishes, for once, he could turn off his inner nerd.

“You look a little glazed, Willas.”

“Sorry- you’re just so ravishing.”

Oberyn smiles at that, reaching up to push Willas’ excitable hair off his forehead before allowing his fingertips to linger on the back of his neck.

Right. Continuing. Good idea. Downward once more, he finishes off Phase One of Removing Oberyn’s Shirt, and parts the gleaming cream fabric. Stares, dry mouthed.

If Jon Snow has abs, and he does - everyone has seen them, because Jon Snow and his abs are a legend amongst many across Westeros - so does Oberyn. Perhaps they aren’t as youthful and pert, because Jon Snow is twenty years, at least, younger than his Dornish Ab Rival, and he religiously does whatever people who enjoy having those sorts of muscles do to make them tip-top and super perky, while Oberyn obviously enjoys the finer things and merely has lots of energetic sex, but Jon’s aren’t so. Golden. Or have a dark trail from the bellybutton that wanders damningly under the low-riding waistband of a pair of sinfully clinging trousers that encase and showcase a straining and impressively large cock. Jon’s are certainly never in grabby handed touching distance of certain Willas Tyrells who just stare at these glorious hillocks exposed before them, fully aware that their expression definitely tends towards the slapped dead guppy fish.

He can’t quite process the rest of it now. Not below the belt. If he even thinks about it this will be over before it even properly begins.

“It is incredibly flattering to be gazed at in such a manner, but you can touch if you so like.”

Willas licks his lips, catches a flare in Oberyn’s expression that sends heat pooling through himself, and, because he can do this, he’s cool, he’s a sexual being and he can do this, instead of laying his hands reverently upon muscle and skin, he lightly brushes his mouth along the hollow of Oberyn’s sternum before finding one of those firm nipples with his teeth.

Under him Oberyn vibrates with a groan, his spine arching as he leans into the contact. As if, Willas thinks madly, he likes what is happening.

This is confirmed as hands find his hair, tangle in the wildness of his curls, tug him up so they are nose to nose.

Oberyn has a wonderful nose; the sort of aquiline protuberance of a senator, or king. Role-playing with him could be a truly wondrous occasion, though probably rather more democratic than the usual master/slave type thing. He could be the noble general. The arrogant rake in a Targaryen Restoration comedy. The pirate captain of Willas’ fevered dreams.

“Your mouth, Willas Tyrell. A mouth so sweet should not be made for sin, and yet-.” He laughs, low and husky, before they are kissing, deep and hungry and all-devouring. Perhaps later there will be gentle touches of lips, little close-mouth pecks, but not now. Willas squirms with the heat, the wet slickness and messy slide of tongues over teeth, hands in his hair turning to nails against his scalp.

Oberyn sucks lightly on his tongue, like he would a cock, and Willas moans helplessly.

He’s never kissed like this; not so hungry, or passionate, or all-world shattering. It filters through, dimly, that he’s never really been kissed by a professional, by someone who enjoys kissing for kissing’s sake and prides themselves in giving an excellent service to those who they are engaging with.

Everything that has gone before turns to ash. Every. Single. Thing. Orgasms. Sex. Kisses. The entire lot of them.

The jeans, and when did his belt end up undone and thrown half-way across the room, are loose enough that Oberyn’s hand insinuates under the soft denim and boxer short combo. Willas doesn’t possess the magnificent muscularity to fill them correctly, which, to be perfectly frank, at that moment in time? Absolute bonus. Down fingers creep, over warm skin, teasing and caressing and dipping between his buttocks. There’s no attempt at actual penetration, just this incredible teasing massage of finger pads over sensitive nerve endings, then another at his perineum pressing just there, just right, and the world explodes into a nuclear winter all at once.

Then the voice, and he’s gone. Entirely. Utterly.

“You’ll will feel so perfect around me, Willas. So tight and hot and wanting. I think I shall open you with my tongue, yes? Such a pretty backside deserves to be worshipped utterly, and to have you squirming and panting and needing me to fill you with my fingers, my cock, my tongue...I shall feast upon you until you cannot even remember your name, sweet one, devour you until you are given over to passion and raw hunger, and nothing else, until you are the beautiful wanton creature of lust that demands I take you and I shall do what you desire, all for you, whatever you wish, my lovely lovely boy-”

Of course he comes in his - Oberyn’s - jeans with a banshee wail against the beautiful man’s lips that just about rattles the elegant glassware in the cupboard next to the whisky decanter, hips helplessly cantering as he rides it out with an impressive sort of selfish hunger that Willas will no doubt look back on with appalled horror. He stutters into the final furlong and frots across the finishing line before he just. Melts. Slowly. Onto Oberyn’s broad and inviting chest, mouthing panted kisses at any bit of skin his lips happen to come near.

For thirty seconds no one says a damned thing, and all Willas can comprehend is that he might be dead and, if he is, death feels absolutely wonderful.

An arm, then the other - meaning his arse is bereft but the rest of him benefits at least - end up around his back, safely anchoring him into position upon his Martell mattress, and, as he starts to breathe normally, Willas realises that he’s come before Oberyn, and that’s not on at all, and the erection against his inner thigh - oh Gods, a sizeable one definitely, one that no sex toy that has gone before could ever compare to - so he shifts as best he can to try and reach, because manners, and-

“Just relax.” At this angle Oberyn is a rumble in his head, filtered through the blood rushing in his own ears and the lub-dub of a strong heartbeat under his face.

“You’re still hard, I should help-”

“It can wait. As I said, sweet one, this is for you. You are young, and easily aroused, and I do not think it shall take long for you to be able to get to the stage where we can be naked before you orgasm once more, hmm? I have a longer refractory period, but I can remain controlled more easily.” The tip of that impressive nose nuzzles fondly at the crown of his head as Willas wonders what he did to deserve someone like Oberyn Martell.

“Also, you are so responsive. I wish to get my mouth upon you and see if you can break my wine glasses as you sing your climax. No. Climaxes. I am sure that I can wring several from you tonight.”

Willas mumbles, buries his face into Oberyn’s neck.

“What was that?”

“Thank you.”

“You do not need to thank me. This is no chore! You are beautiful, and reactive, and when you forget your lovely manners and use me to grind yourself to coming incredibly sexually alluring. I would see you use me for your pleasure as selfishly as you desire, Willas Tyrell. Be that holding me by the hips and biting the nape of my neck as you rut into me, spoiling me for the cock of other men, or my tongue teasing you where my fingers just were, or even just by telling me what you truly wish. Not what you think I need, for I am the most sexually easy man in Dorne and therefore the whole of Westeros, but what you want. Anything.”

His hands trail down the lean lines of Willas’ spine, over knobs of bone and suggestions of ribs, then up, then down. Over and over, in the most glorious of rhythms, and slowly he turns into a puddle of goo.

“That’s lovely.”

“Yes. You are.’

Willas hits him, very gently, on the arm, but he’s smiling now, against skin and hair and salt.

“Oberyn?”

“Yes?”

“What do you think I need?”

He feels the confusion and a possible fond amusement as Oberyn chuckles softly.

“What you need? Hmm. Perhaps I can answer a little, from what I know of you? Appreciating. In bed and out of it. Introduction to many new ideas under the care of someone who understands that while you crave knowledge these acts may not please you and will not force you to partake. Confidence. The realisation you are allowed to be selfish, my sweet Willas. Someone who will fuck and be fucked, as you both desire, who gives and receives with equal pleasure. Someone with a voice that sets you coming without being touched. I am adamant that I shall talk you to coming across my face as I tell you filthy things, lovely one.”

“Someone who wouldn't lie about their intentions,” Willas says, his voice a soft murmur against Oberyn’s skin. “It would be very easy to get attached to you, which sounds very stupid, but I'm an idiot as I told you earlier, and you’re just. Just different. To anyone. You're far too nice to me, you’re lovely to waiters which is always a good sign, you love animals which is even better. Your voice is something that should be illegal, really. The way you are effortless with it all, so confident, so cool in the face of panicking Reachman flailing about drunk in your airport. You’re clever - I've only been able to talk with Alleras about things we've spoken about, or faculty - and you know things. You’re just. You. Just you. Perceptive magnificent you. Arrogant, yes, and I'd hate to be your enemy. You’d be the sort to poison people, I bet, because that's an intellectual murder for political enemies, isn't it? That you're so experienced in everything, not just sex, is quite terrifying but wonderful at the same time.”

“Flattery makes me more arrogant, foolish one.”

“I understand if this is one night,” he continues, thankful of the angle at which they're sprawled. “ I can be proud that I've had one night with the most beautiful man in Westeros-”

“Ah. No, Willas. No, sweet boy.” He's shifted like a sack of slightly gross semen-stained potatoes so they’re face to face. “Why would this be just one night?”

“It’s...not?” 

“It can be, if you desire. If you want more than one night, then it can also be that. I think perhaps what connexion we have is worth far more than one night? I would very much like to see you again, after your two weeks in Dorne have ended. Would that be something that would please you?”

All at once everything crashes down, a cold-ice water bucket, and Willas shivers.

He looks into an abyss.

Say yes, compromise everything things - heart, soul, body (though that part sounds more fun than terrifying if this sip at the Fountain of Oberyn Martell is a taste of what could be), possibly sanity. What if everything goes terribly wrong? What then? What if, even worse, it all goes beautifully right and he’s not world famous by the age of thirty five, lauded amongst the highest of society. What if Willas decides to leave KLU, move to Sunspear, take up tenure in a ‘lesser’ department, all because of a man. What if the carefully laid out path before him crumbles and he’s left lost but not alone? Willas is the sort of person who knew his course in life from the age of seven. Is he truly capable of jeopardising everything that he is because of a possible infatuation?

Say no. Kiss Oberyn one last time as he leaves, like in that song, on a jet plane. Back to the capital, back to his quiet academic life devoid of lust, and desire, and Dornish voices. Back to a dry, dusty existence where the only excitement comes at three in the morning when another molecule of DNA results in a breakthrough that shatters the world of science. A breakthrough that might change the course of history, but no one apart from those he works with cares about such a thing. Not like Willas does. Where students make eyes at him, but he’s so far above that, in some carved ivory prison of his own making, that he can’t ever escape.

Beric was easier in a way. Friendship came far before they decided to be lovers, and they weren’t ever quite in love. Living in the same city helped for a start, and knowing the same people. Easy, and almost safe perhaps, even if they weren’t compatible. Oberyn, however. Fiercely intelligent, witty, dangerous, dazzlingly carnal Oberyn. A not at all safe option, and definitely not sensible.

The abyss winks back.

 

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!

* * *

 

 

Someone knocks on his door?

Tyrion Lannister looks up from DMing one of the hot interns from Environmental Science, wonders who dares disturb him before lunch on a Monday. There are few who take the risk; Varys, obviously. Jaime. Attractively tall large breasted interns who bring him coffee and flirt mercilessly. Everyone else knows not to approach him until after at least two in the afternoon, and even then they bring bribes in the shape of pastries and/or phone numbers for various beautiful women.

No one quite knows what Tyrion does at KLU, especially himself, but it seems to bring in plenty of accolades and revenue. He has three potential Nobel prize winners on the staff, which in turn attracts the highest calibre of student, allowing King’s Landing University to charge the top dragon for degree courses. If it means charming mostly dead geriatrics, greasing palms, and poaching the best teaching staff from other institutions of higher learning, then fuck it.

More gratifyingly, it pisses off his Dad. According to Tywin, Tyrion should be working for him, but since they hate each other - hadn't every son fantasized about shooting their father in the chest at some point? - Tyrion thought it best to get out of that particular toxic Lannister cesspool. The further away from Tywin and Cersei the better, as proximity increases the prospect of losing one’s mind. Living in Essos and sampling the many fine women and even finer wines is the ultimate goal, but Tyrion also derives a perverse pleasure from being near enough to his family to drive them absolutely incandescent with rage and watch, with glee, the ensuing fallout, but far away enough that he doesn’t run barking mad.

He’s close to Varys who is close to the Queen, and if Tyrion spends rather a lot of time with the lovely Daenerys, no one says anything. Apart from Tyrion. Who rubs it in Tywin’s face that he’s in favour and Dad? Dad really isn't. Something about Elia Martell, Rhaegar Targaryen, and an unfortunate series of events that really upset the Dornish. Which is a shame, as Tyrion adores the Dornish, but at least they don’t seem to hold him personally responsible for wandering Targaryen cock, industrial blackmail, and very nice women scorned.

He and Tywin send each other frostily polite emails occasionally, containing plenty of subtextual insults and bitching, and cards at Sevenmas.  

“Come in, I suppose,” he grumbles, making his excuses about having to work to the intern. She sends various emoji which Tyrion translates as possible blow jobs in the future, but he’s also slightly concerned that now interns are young enough to communicate without words these days.

Maybe he’s just getting old. Maybe he should settle down. Maybe.

No. He will not daydream of Dany.

Anyway, visitor. Before Lunch visitors are never his favourite. Unless they actually bring lunch, and then that’s quite acceptable, but normally the fools who turn up at almost lunchtime want him to do some work. Despicable. Tyrion stares at the door with the sort of mismatched dissolute gaze that makes him surprisingly popular with women under the age of thirty, and...well. He expects someone, because of the knock, but not the someone who comes through the door.

Willas is never that bold. He hibernates in his dungeon level laboratory and does weird shit with horse come. He also looks suspiciously healthy, sporting what might charitably be called a tan, a dark red shirt that he looks comfortable in - when was the last time Tyrell had been comfortable in himself? Ah, yes. When drunk and accidentally breaking Baelish’s nose - and a hopeful expression. Puppies are less adorable, according to the female faculty members.

The reason Willas gets mothered is because he’s gay as all Seven hells, and therefore non-threatening. His penis doesn’t get in the way of having a conversation. Given this is a Science department, there are far more penii than vaginas, and several of the professors can’t quite function around women. They either clam up and stare at their shoes while mumbling about weird medical procedures (Tarly) or go the Full Baelish and try and turn the poor women into sexbots.

The thought of Professor Asshai, who has, according the Varys, the most incredible cosmetic facial surgeon this side of Yi Ti on beck and call, and who clocks in at around thirty five years old but has been in the university longer than Tyrion has been alive, being turned into Baelish’s sexbot? Unpleasant, though Tyrion would be fascinated to go to bed with Mel. She’s gorgeous, and terrifying, and probably utterly filthy.

Baelish stares at her and calls her ‘Cat’ sometimes.

Tyrion makes a mental note to get Varys to ‘deal’ with Baelish.

Varys’ connections scare the shit out of him sometimes.

Right. Tyrell.

“Can I talk to you? Sorry.” Willas, as always, needs to be invited to take a seat. He’s too polite for a man who has been covered in horse come so many times that it’s actually gone past hilarious and on to both boring and slightly disturbing.

“Will it take long? It's almost lunch time. Aren't you supposed to be winning that Nobel Prize rather than delaying my lunch? No one likes me when I’m hangry. I cut funding and set the Prime Minister on people I despise.” Tyrion cultivates the ability to look and talk at a person while being able to type emails and answer texts; it’s delightfully unsettling. He clatters off a message to Varys to apologise for lateness and to ask him to order the sushi  in the time that Willas Tyrell takes to look suitable apologetic.

“Sorry. I really am so sorry, Mr Lannister, I am. I just. I needed to speak with you about something, an idea I had, and it's quite time-sensitive really, because of what’s going on, as if we leave it too long we could lose, well, someone, and I was in Dorne, you see, and I had a wonderful idea. You know Sarella?”

Tyrell whitters when he’s nervous, which is most of the time when he’s around people he’s unsure of. Tyrion likes the man; he never complains, never spends all of his grant money so his department almost makes a profit, teaches very well despite his burgeoning fan club of stalkers, and he brings in quite a lot of financial investment for the university just by being pretty and good at science. That he’s a genius is a mere bonus.

But yes. He does know Sarella. Not as well as he’d like because, damn, Oberyn’s genetics - why aren’t they studying Martell’s sperm and selling that off to the highest bidder? Surely that’d be more fascinating than horse come? - but he’s had the pleasure of her company. Tall. Androgynous. Tyrion would, definitely. He likes his curvy Lorathi dancers, and loves his pale Targaryen rulers,, but, like Jaime, sometimes he'd like to be the one thrown around. He never thought he and his brother had women in common until he finally met Brienne, and then everything slotted into place. Ah Sarella. Scientifically as brilliant as Tyrell, pretty much his research partner, and he’s had strangely erotic dreams about her turning from a girl into a boy and back again, all while they’re having sweaty sex. Virginia Woolf would have a field day.

“Of course I know her.” He waves an imperious be-ringed hand. “Go on.”

“Oldtown have offered her a position.” Willas widens his hazel eyes, just a tad.

Tyrion freezes.

Fuck the Citadel! Fuck them. A bunch of mostly dead hermits who wouldn't know a new scientific theory if it bit them on their wrinkly scrotums.

Oldtown and and KLU have always been rivals. The former sees the city university as a jumped up young whippersnapper who never cares for tradition. The latter considers their Citadel colleagues as stuck in the past and pretentious to a fault. Hate isn't the word, but looking under loathing in a thesaurus describes the enmity quite accurately. Also Tyrion poached Tarly from them, and the Grand Maester hates him personally for that. He sent an angry polite email, but since Tyrion’s immune to them after dealing with Tywin for so many years, it merely amused him.

“The absolute fuckers!” His Sarella. His! By dint of being Tyrell’s research partner. And if Sarella goes to Oldtown, does that mean that Willas will have to cooperate with the geriatric twats who everyone at King’s loathes, to a man?

Willas leans in, rests his elbows on the desk. For whatever reason he seems almost in control of himself for a change - how can he be, in such a dire situation where the Citadel are after his research partner? - a dimple dancing in his cheek, all soft-eyed but overlain with something sharper, almost devious? Quite like his hot sister. Damn. Margaery. One that didn't quite get away as never got near in the first place because of the ginger charms of Robb Stark. Loras tried it on with Tyrion once, but it wasn’t the same. Despite Varys’ quiet encouragement, he’s never been at home with more than one cock in an orgy.

“But they don't want Sarella, either, they only want Alleras because they’re awfully odd about women, aren’t they? But then I had an idea. Sarella wants to experience teaching at another university for a while, a good one, and I know Sunspear is decent, but it’s not us or Oldtown, so I thought maybe she could come here for a bit because everyone knows her here as Sarella and Alleras, she knows the syllabus, she's really so good and brilliant and she deserves to not have to go to the Citadel?” He splays his fingers on the desk, drawing patterns in the polish.

“Very few people deserve to go to the Citadel, and only then if you believe in cruel and unusual punishments. However, we can’t afford another associate.” Shit. Shit shit shit!

“You could.” Willas smiles, charmingly helpful. “See, maybe she and I could swap for a bit? It would help the research so much if I was in Dorne for a while, and I'd still be part of the university, just a visiting professor in Sunspear, so you'd just pay me, and they'd still pay her, so you'd not have to spend any more and-”

Tyrion isn't stupid. If he was, he'd be working with his father. No, unlike his sister and, to some extent Jaime, he's bloody clever. More than others give him credit for. He takes in the earnestness, the hope, the semi-desperate use of even more puppy-dog eyes than usual.

The suspicious hickey on Willas’ neck.

“You got laid in Dorne, didn't you? You little shit.”

To go the same colour as a maroon shirt is simply talented, and Tyrion congratulates himself for having that effect. Willas stares at him, mouth opening and closing, before he sighs.

“Yes. Oh Gods. Am I that transparent?”

“You were only there two weeks and you want to move to Dorne because of cock?” he jokes. Tyrell merely goes purple, confirming what was a mere jest with sheer obviousness. Despite this coming from left field, Tyrion deals with it admirably. After all, as much as he’s aware of Willas’ earning potential for the university, he’s not Sarella Sand, who could be even more marketable. Also, he’d still own Tyrell’s arse, and would merely be loaning him out to Sunspear, who would owe King’s Landing a favour so big that Tyrion can almost taste the grovelling thankfulness.

“Shit. That's fast. Here's me thinking you're the least likely person in the entire universe to do anything drastic, and you merrily piss that away. Do I know him?”

Nervousness flickers. Tyrion almost feels sorry for the poor bastard: Willas’ love life has forever been a colossal shit show. Rumour is that he walked in in his ex being fisted by that short weird mortuary sciences lecturer, the one that steals body parts. Hopefully it was Bolton’s own fist. Otherwise they'll have to burn all the cadavers and start over. Actually, knowing Ramsay, it’s best to nuke the department and rebuild on the ashes of the damned.

“He works with Professor Lannister’s wife,” Willas mumbles, looking at his endlessly moving hands. 

Flight crew then. A quick round up reveals two suspects, and he rapidly decreases that to one because Theon is a shagger and not a lover.

“Oberyn? You’re fucking Oberyn?"

Willas whimpers.

Tyrion grins, broad and evil. Varys likens him to a demonic pug when he’s like that.

“You. And Oberyn Martell.”

Another whimper.

“Stranger on a pogo stick, you’re a dark horse, aren’t you? Screwing your research partner’s Dad.”

“Please stop?”

“Then trying to get the research partner a post here so you can return to Dorne for some more hot Professor on Dad action, you surprisingly sneaky bastard.”

“Oh. Gods.”

Tyrion, on a roll, clambers from his chair and starts wandering about his office, oratory style. “You’ll be Sarella’s stepmother, if you’re not careful. At least Oberyn can’t knock you up - he’s got enough kids. Your grandmother will be all over this like plague, won’t she? Loras and Renly is one thing, but you and a fucking prince? I can see the magazine deals in the future, Willas my boy.”

Willas has to give him the dying goat look before Tyrion finally takes pity.

“Is he offering you more than just a quick romantic shag in Dorne? Because if he’s going to toy with you, I will have Varys put a hit on him. No one hurts my prized and most favoured future Nobel winner and gets away with it. You’re one of the more likeable of the scientist twats under my command. I wouldn’t want you to be hurt.” Despite his cynical nature, Tyrion can be a bit of a romantic sometimes. He has enough sex to sink a whaling ship, but he’s just searching for his one. With his penis. And sometimes other parts of his body.

Oh, Dany.

Willas manages a faint smile, his skin slowly melting back toward that tanned milky tea colour that looks so out of place. “He doesn’t mind that I’m weird. He kind of likes how weird I am, which is weird in itself.”

“You’re not weird. How many times have I told you that you’re rich enough, pretty enough, and clever enough to be the dictionary definition of eccentric?”

“He gets me, I suppose? And he’s - oh, he’s beautiful, and clever, and he understands when I talk to him about covalent bonds and polynucleotides, and how centrifuges work. He lets me be me? It’s hard being me when I’ve been so used to being what other people expect, so it’s all quite new, and a bit scary, and I’m just prattling on now because you’re the first person I’ve told about him apart from Sarella, and she’s fine with it, finds it hilarious actually, which is quite odd. What if I’d slept with Sarella? That would be more odd. Wouldn’t it be odd?”

Tyrion throws a stress ball at Willas’ head, which bounces off and lands in the recycling (white only, because the university has a racist paper recycling policy) bin.

“Will you at least have a think about it?” he begs.

“You have to admit,” Tyrion calls after him, as Willas retreats out the door with more apologies and promises of bringing whisky-sodden hot toddies at some point, “Sarella ticks more inclusivity boxes than you. Ethnic minority, gender fluid, possibly gay. I’ll shove her in your wheelchair and bask in the approval and funding that’d result.”

Willas flashes a smile, and it’s only then that Tyrion realises he’s not got his cane and the limp doesn’t seem as obvious as usual.

 

* * *

 

“Good evening, and allow me to welcome you to Sunspear International. I’d like to thank you all  for your patronage on behalf of myself, Captain Tarth, the flight crew, and Lannist-Air. Please remember to check the hold for luggage and other belongings but, for safety reasons, please remain seated with seatbelts fastened until the aeroplane has come to a complete halt. Please also be aware that smoking is not allowed until you reach the designated areas outside the terminal building. Again, thank you for flying Lannist-Air.”

First Officer Mormont has excellent North-inflected vowels, a low honied tone, and, from the brief glance into the cockpit before take off showed, looks very much like the sort of handsome army officer that can be found in Westerosi war films of the 1950s. The sort with stiff upper lips, noble deaths, and Alec Guinness or Dicky Attenborough. Very much  _ The Great Escape _ , or  _ Bridge over the River Rhoyne _ .

Willas Tyrell pays no heed, however, to the charms of tall Bear Islanders, or that First Officer Tarth has finally won her promotion, or how Theon Greyjoy isn’t anywhere to be seen and has been replaced on this flight by a strange green-eyed young man who promises they will all land safely as he has foreseen it. Even his glass of wine - not Dornish, or Arbour, but something more rotgut and tannin-sodden - remains half-touched.

Because of his leg he’s the last one from the plane, clambering carefully down the steps and onto the tarmac, cane in hand; months away from Dorne have played havoc with his stupid knee, especially with winter coming, as Robb Stark texts on a daily basis. As much as he likes Margie’s husband, and, by extension, the whole of the Stark clan, the meteorologist thing does wear. Robb tends towards enthusiastic amateur rather than accurate forecaster, and the last time he said they were due a cold snap the entirely of Westeros sweltered in the hottest Sevenmas for eighty six years.

Willas never got to wear his favourite awful jumper, the one with the reindeer with light-up flashing antlers and a battery pack that looks quite suggestive if he doesn’t keep it tucked at waist height.

Through baggage retrieval, this time without a suitcase - everything he needs fits neatly into the carry on he’s dragging - and a lazy check of his passport by a bored looking border guard, before out into the arrivals lounge. For a moment he feels a little lost, all glass and air and packs of people milling about chattering in languages he half-understands, and accents that reverberate through his head, before hands find his hips and a moustache tickles the side of his neck as lips brush his pulse point.

“Oberyn?”

“No. Just a Dornishman taking advantage of a beautiful man. I know of no Oberyn. I am most definitely not him. I am merely enjoying pouncing upon lovely professors who should never be abandoned by any Oberyn."

Willas turns on his toes, almost elegant despite his mad hair and madder grin, before he’s being kissed. Kissed and kissed, and those strong tanned hands at his waist migrate south for the winter - which is coming in the North, but not at all in Dorne, and someone should be coming, really, because it’s been months of texts, and phone calls, and Skyping without a webcam as he doesn’t own one, though obviously Oberyn does, and there have been one or two saucy videos sent up to blow his mind even harder, and Willas is a passionate soul underneath, and he just wants sex and romance and love, dammit, is that too much to ask? - to cup his arse and squeeze. And yes.

This feels right. Everything left behind in King’s Landing and Highgarden fades into a sepia nostalgia rather than a nervous-driven craving of ‘what if he was wrong.’ This is right, and true, and wonderful, and Oberynish, and the man himself tastes of black coffee and lust, combined with a certain mind-addling Martellness that must have some sort of addictive quality. DNA analysis of saliva might be needed, just to check.

Oberyn lets him up for air, murmurs something fond about stubble rash and how Willas’ jeans are indecently snug.

“Loras bullied me into buying them.”

“I must meet Loras. He obviously wishes for you to be ravished, and I appreciate his dedication to his and your cause.”

Helplessly, Willas buries his face into Oberyn’s shoulder, fisted hands absolutely destroying the once pristine smoothness of his linen shirt. That tension that lives forever in his upper neck and shoulders lessens, just a little. Magic Oberyn touch is magic.

“Shall we go home, sweet one?”

“Yes please. It’s been too long since I saw you, and-” Willas nuzzles further, uncaring for once of being stared at by half an airport.

Being physically apart ached more than he ever posited. Ridiculous really, because how long has he known Oberyn now? A few weeks over five months - five long months, spent trying to sort out tenures, getting Alleras properly acquainted with King’s Landing, carefully maneuvering around his familial duties tying up loose ends - and all because of a whirlwind two weeks in Dorne, with possibly the love of his life. Beric thinks he’s being very brave. Everyone else warns him about Oberyn’s reputation, which Willas knows and accepts and secretly thinks quite exciting. Olenna merely heard the words prince and Martell and congratulated him upon landing a prize worthy of a Tyrell. Garlan promised to set helicopter gunships on Sunspear if Willas is hurt, and Margie invited the two of them to Winterfell for Sevenmas. Loras? Asked for photos with a sort of leer that seemed shark-like. Renly had to resort to nose bopping with a tea spoon.

“It’s been wonderful you talking to me for all these months, you know what your voice does, but I’d really like to stop the just talking and start the full experience now, please?”

Oberyn tilts Willas’ chin up with his thumb, trails fingers across his cheekbones.

“I hope you are prepared to not get out of my bed for at least a week, lovely, but then I propose we thoroughly investigate this living together as a couple idea that others seem to enjoy, hmm?”

“Is that a promise?” Aware of the particularly soppy look on his face, and fearing that he’s broadcasting fuck me now vibes all over the east of the Dornish peninsula - like some sort of homing beacon - Willas attempts to school his visage into something cooler. Sexier. As if attractive men say these sorts of things to him at all times. He fails miserably.

“My tongue,” Oberyn purrs, heated and lusty and Dornish-sexy in Willas’ blushing ear, “never lies.”

 

* * *

 


End file.
